Founding Engineer

ABOUT THE ROLE This is a core infrastructure role at a seed-stage graph database company building the memory and context layer for AI agents. You'll join a small, high-conviction engineering team owning the hardest parts of the stack — query execution, graph storage internals, and distributed systems — and make architecture decisions that shape the product for the next decade. It's a direct-impact position: your name will be on the design docs and the pull requests in the same week. WHAT YOU'LL DO - Own and ship core infrastructure components including the query engine, graph storage layer, and distributed systems. - Drive architecture decisions with long-term product impact alongside the founding team. - Contribute to benchmark and research work that defines the technical category. - Participate in architecture reviews and make hard technical trade-offs with real production consequences. - Help raise the technical ceiling and shape engineering culture as the team scales. WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR - 3+ years of relevant engineering experience with strong CS fundamentals — the kind built on first principles, not just frameworks. - Proficiency in Rust or Go, or a demonstrated drive to go deep in systems-level languages. - Hands-on experience designing and shipping distributed systems, databases, or storage infrastructure in production environments. - Proven ability to own large, ambiguous problems without a defined playbook. - Track record of shipping production systems that real customers depend on under load. - Open source contributions in systems-level projects are a strong plus. - Prior founding engineer or early-stage infrastructure experience is a plus. COMPENSATION & BENEFITS Salary range: $160,000 – $270,000 USD annually, plus meaningful equity. Additional benefits include a learning budget, flexible PTO, wellness programs, and a gear/software stipend. Visa sponsorship is not available. LOCATION On-site in San Francisco, CA, United States.