Founding Engineering Lead
New York City | $250k–$300k base + equity
We’re working with a well-funded early-stage technology company in New York that is building an AI-enabled B2B platform for enterprise customers.
Following strong early commercial traction, they’re looking for a Founding Engineering Lead to take significant ownership across the product, architecture and engineering team as the business scales.
This is a hands-on technical leadership role rather than a traditional management-heavy position. It could suit a Staff Engineer, Founding Engineer, Tech Lead or first-time engineering leader looking for significantly more ownership.
You’ll remain close to the technology, spending roughly half your time hands-on while gradually building and leading the engineering team around you.
What you'll be doing:
- Building and shipping production software alongside the engineering team
- Owning key architectural decisions as the platform scales
- Helping shape how AI and agentic systems are applied within the product
- Working directly with the founders on product and technical direction
- Hiring and developing a small, high-calibre engineering team
- Setting the technical bar across engineering, architecture and delivery
- Helping solve complex problems for large enterprise customers
- Taking increasing ownership of the engineering function as the company grows
What we're looking for:
You may currently be a Senior/Staff Engineer, Founding Engineer, Tech Lead or early-stage engineering leader.
You'll ideally bring:
- Strong backend and platform engineering fundamentals
- Recent experience writing and shipping production code
- Early-stage or high-growth technology experience
- Experience leading, mentoring or hiring engineers
- Evidence of building products or major systems from 0→1
- Strong architecture and systems-design capability
- Experience shipping AI/ML functionality into production
- Comfort operating in ambiguous, fast-moving environments
- Strong product judgement and an interest in the customer problem
- A CS degree or equivalent technical background
Experience building B2B enterprise software is particularly relevant. Experience in fintech or another regulated environment would be useful but isn't essential.
The opportunity:
This is an opportunity to join while the engineering organisation is still small enough to have genuine influence over both the product and how the team is built.
They are specifically not looking for someone who wants to step away from engineering into pure management. The successful person will lead from the front technically and take on broader engineering leadership as the company scales.
There is a credible path towards wider technical leadership over time.
Package
$250k–$300k base + meaningful equity
New York City, with a strong preference for people who enjoy working closely with an in-person early-stage team.
Founding Engineering Lead in New York City Metropolitan Area at Elev8 Recruitment
This position is listed as full time and onsite. It was posted 4 days ago.