Founding Engineer

About the company

Clera is a talent-matching platform that replaces traditional job applications by connecting candidates and hiring teams through curated introductions.

About this role

ABOUT THE ROLE A well-funded, stealth-stage consumer tech startup is building an AI-powered map and social discovery platform — helping people figure out where to go, what to do, and who to go with. The company has assembled one of the largest structured indices of real-world places and events (200M+ places, millions of events) and is now building an intelligent, social product experience on top of it. They're looking for a Founding Engineer to join on-site in San Francisco. This is a rare opportunity to shape core systems and product from the ground up alongside the founding team. WHAT YOU'LL DO - Design and ship product features and backend systems from zero to production - Work directly with founders on product direction and architecture decisions - Own end-to-end problems — not just contribute to them - Move fluidly across the stack: frontend, backend, infrastructure, and AI Example problems you might work on: - Ranking what someone should do tonight using embeddings, structured data, and social signals - Pushing Elasticsearch + vector search to sub-100ms latency across massive datasets - Building real-time systems (chat, presence, location) that feel genuinely instantaneous - Designing map display algorithms that surface what deserves attention - Building agent pipelines that plan queries and synthesize well-informed answers - Structuring unstructured web data to power novel discovery experiences AREAS OF FOCUS Most engineers here won't fit neatly into one track — and that's the point. Application Engineer (Full-Stack) - Build fast, expressive interfaces across mobile (iOS/Android) and web - Own features end-to-end from UI through backend - Work deeply on rendering performance and interaction design - Stack: TypeScript, React, React Native, iOS/Android Data / AI Engineer - Build the intelligence layer: search, ranking, pipelines, and agent systems - Design systems that operate over large-scale, messy real-world data - Work with LLMs, embeddings, and retrieval/recommendation systems - Stack: Python and/or TypeScript, Elasticsearch, Snowflake, LLMs WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR Required: - 0–5 years of professional software engineering experience - Based in San Francisco or willing to relocate — on-site presence is required - Eligible to work in the United States without visa sponsorship - Proven experience building real-time and/or low-latency systems - Proficiency in search and ranking algorithms and systems - Experience with data processing pipelines, data engineering, or ML/AI workflows - Experience with infrastructure and performance optimization for production environments - Prior early-stage startup experience; comfortable operating with high ambiguity - Ability to collaborate across product, design, and engineering with full end-to-end ownership - Strong problem-solving and decision-making skills in fast-paced environments Strong signals (not hard requirements): - You've built something technically ambitious end-to-end - You have exceptional problem-solving ability — systems, math, or both - You move fast and don't need much structure to do great work - You care about taste — not just whether something works, but how it feels This role is not a fit if you: - Prefer clearly scoped, structured tasks - Are a single-domain specialist unwilling to stretch across the stack - Require a remote arrangement COMPENSATION & BENEFITS - Salary: $150,000 – $250,000 USD annually (depending on experience) - Early equity in a well-funded, high-conviction consumer AI startup - Direct impact on product, architecture, and company direction from day one LOCATION - San Francisco, CA — on-site required - Relocation considered for exceptional candidates - No visa sponsorship available; must be authorized to work in the United States