Experienced generalist founding engineers needed in SF. Must thrive in fast-paced startups, with experience in GoLang, TypeScript, React, Redis. Work on-site; visa sponsorship available. Key responsibilities: full-stack building, user interaction, rapid iteration, shaping product vision. Avoid WLB-focused or pure management backgrounds. $150k-$250k salary range.

Paradigm is a reimagined workspace with AI at its core. Paradigm is based in San Francisco and is backed by Y Combinator and the best builder/operators out there including cofounders of Dropbox, Intercom, Langchain, Redis, Behance, Posthog, and more.As agents become more and more powerful, accessible large scale agent-orchestration becomes the biggest opportunity. If building a magical and accessible agent experience excites you, this is the right place for you.

Co-founder / CEO

Paradigm

We’re looking for experienced generalist founding engineers who thrive in
fast-moving startups, and are excited to create an AI native workspace.

Anna Monaco

default plan

Second technical

Algo technical

Generally 2-3 days and can be during the weekend. It is a paid work trial

Onsite / Work trial

Chat with Anna

Founding Engineer

We’re looking for experienced generalist founding engineers who thrive in fast-moving startups, and are excited to create an AI native workspace.

Top schools: Penn, Waterloo, UT, MIT, McGill, Harvard, Stanford (sometimes)

Has worked at hyper growth companies with a high engineering bar(some examples below): Figma, Databricks, Retool, Perplexity, Linear, Notion, Vercel. Snowflake, Stripe, Jane Street, Airtable, etc.

Experience with GoLang, TypeScript, React, Redis, RAG systems, and agent architectures is a plus

Willingness to work in-person in San Francisco

Culture fit: Obsessed with speed and scale, can work in fast-paced and ambiguous environments, insatiably curious, and learns quickly

Experience as only a SWE or quant background. Anyone coming from product or management roles with some SWE experience is not a fit

Avoid candidates that have no evidence of personal/side projects

Avoid candidates that are "professional managers" since this is an IC role

Here are key insights for evaluating Founding Engineer applicants:

*   **Experience Level:** Prioritize candidates with approximately 3-8 years of post-college experience.
*   **Company Pedigree:** Strong preference for candidates from companies known for high engineering bars and excellent product craft (e.g., Figma, Databricks, Retool, Notion, Vercel, Stripe). This is a primary signal, even over top-tier education.
*   **Founder Mindset:** Look for individuals who demonstrate high ownership, a proactive approach, and a willingness to take on significant responsibility.
*   **Product Acumen:** Candidates should show a history of releasing polished products and a deep understanding of product taste.
*   **Technical Depth:**
    *   **Product Engineer:** Proven track record of shipping polished products consistently.
    *   **Backend Engineer:** Experience with production infrastructure for applications with moderate traffic (10-20k MAU), ideally owning features end-to-end. Key skills include cloud deployment (AWS, Azure, GCP), databases (Postgres, Redis), and messaging services.
    *   **Plus Skills:** GoLang, TypeScript, React, RAG systems, and agent architectures are beneficial.
*   **Avoid:** Candidates primarily focused on work-life balance, those lacking personal projects, or individuals transitioning from pure product/management roles without significant SWE experience.
*   **Success Factors:** Candidates with experience at hyper-growth companies, a demonstrated ability to build products end-to-end, and a clear passion for fast-paced, impactful work are strong fits.
*   **Failure Factors:** Lack of end-to-end product building experience, unclear personal project execution, and a focus on deep AI rather than product integration can be red flags.

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