Founding Engineer
Raydar
Founding Engineer
Raydar
AI-powered recruiting agency for tech roles
Raydar · San Francisco, United States · Full-time · Posted 2026-09-19
Salary: USD 185,000–250,000
Workplace: on_site
About the company
Our client is an applied AI research company building production tools for safer AI use in regulated industries. The engineering team works closely with researchers and early customers.
The role
Raydar is recruiting for this role on behalf of our client. Join as a Founding Engineer to turn research into reliable product capabilities. You will shape architecture, build infrastructure, and help establish engineering practices.
What you'll do
- Build evaluation environments for AI systems used in financial workflows.
- Turn research prototypes into production-ready guardrails.
- Ship safety tooling and improve it through customer feedback.
- Make architecture decisions and build core infrastructure.
- Help shape engineering practices and adapt to changing research priorities.
What we're looking for
- Software engineering experience delivering real products, with the structured experience range listed as 1 to 5 years.
- Hands-on experience with production systems and core infrastructure.
- Ability to build and own customer-facing features from scratch.
- Comfort working through ambiguity in a research-oriented environment.
- Strong computer science or technical fundamentals through education or professional experience.
- Ability to work onsite five days per week.
Bonus points
- Experience with agentic systems, retrieval, inference infrastructure, or self-hosted deployment.
- Experience building evaluation harnesses, RL environments, or training pipelines.
- Startup experience or a research background combined with commercial product delivery.
Compensation and benefits
- Base salary: USD 185,000 to 250,000 per year.
- Equity: 0.25-3%.
- Unlimited paid time off.
Location and work model
- San Francisco, California, United States.
- Five days per week onsite.
- Visa transfers are supported.
Powered by Workable
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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