Founding Software Engineer
Raydar
Founding Software Engineer
Raydar
AI-powered recruiting agency for tech roles
Raydar · New York, United States · Full-time · Posted 2026-10-16
Salary: USD 150,000–250,000
Workplace: on_site
About the company
Our client is a fast-growing consumer software company.
The role
Raydar is recruiting for this role on behalf of our client. Own the design and delivery of application and backend features for a widely used consumer product, working side by side with company leadership. The work centers on applied AI systems and the infrastructure behind them, in a compact, in-person environment.
What you'll do
- Build and refine the core AI agent framework, covering tool use, memory, prompting, retrieval and evaluation.
- Take features from architecture through launch and ongoing iteration across the user-facing app and backend services.
- Partner directly with the founders to shape a simple, polished user experience.
- Extend agent capabilities with sandboxed tooling and backend and database infrastructure designed to scale.
- Help deploy and tune GPU infrastructure, including fine-tuning and serving open-source language models.
- Weigh tradeoffs between speed, spend, stability, data protection and usability when making technical decisions.
- Contribute to future product initiatives as the company grows.
What we're looking for
- Solid engineering background across the full stack or on the backend.
- Hands-on experience building an agentic system that goes beyond simple LLM SDK calls, including tool calling, memory and system prompts.
- Practical experience with open-source language models, such as serving, fine-tuning or evaluation.
- A history of building and shipping your own product, whether a startup, side project or open-source work, with measurable results such as users, revenue or adoption.
- A public code portfolio showing personal projects and recent, steady activity.
- Clear, effective communication.
- Comfort taking ownership of whatever needs attention in a lean team.
- Willingness to work an intense early-stage schedule, up to 7 days a week with 5 in the office.
Bonus points
- Founding or early engineer experience at an applied AI or consumer startup.
- Strong consumer product instincts.
- Open-source contributions.
- A long coding history that predates AI coding tools.
Compensation and benefits
- Base salary: USD 150,000 to 250,000 per year
- Equity
Location and work model
- New York, NY, United States
- On-site, 5 days per week in the office
- Full-time
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Raydar is an AI-powered talent acquisition firm that serves tech-focused organizations on a contingency basis, charging client companies only after a successful hire. It uses proprietary AI to identify a large pool of candidates and conducts a short 15-minute AI-driven interview (recorded and transcribed) before human recruiters review materials, provide interview prep, and assist with offers and negotiations. What sets it apart is the blend of automated sourcing and screening with hands-on human oversight and tailored client support. Its goal is to help organizations hire more efficiently by speeding up sourcing while maintaining thorough evaluation and negotiation assistance.
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