Founding Engineer
Company websitegetclera.com (Clera, opens in new tab)
Base salary $150K to $220K
Employer-published annual base salary, USD. Advertised base range in San Francisco, CA
You apply on the employer's own site. Six Figure Work does not handle applications.
- LocationSan Francisco, CA
- WorkplaceOn-site
- Status at last checkSource accepting applications when checked
- Last checked (27 min ago) · observed since
About this job
About the Role
A seed-stage AI data infrastructure startup in San Francisco is looking for a Founding Engineer with 1+ years of professional experience shipping to production. This is a foundational hire at an early-stage company building a people-data and agent platform — you'll have real ownership, work directly with leadership, and help shape the technical direction of the product as it scales toward Series A. Ideal for a high-agency, first-principles thinker who thrives in ambiguity and has founder aspirations.
What You'll Do
Design, build, and operate core infrastructure powering a people-data and AI agent platform, including APIs, LLM-powered workflows, scraping systems, and large-scale knowledge graph architecture.
Architect and maintain production-grade systems capable of handling millions of API requests, with a strong focus on performance, cost efficiency, and reliability across cloud and Linux server environments.
Own projects end-to-end — from ambiguous problem definition through deployment and iteration — shipping quickly without sacrificing system integrity.
Collaborate directly with the CEO and CTO on technical decisions, roadmap priorities, and foundational architectural choices that will define the company's long-term direction.
Contribute broadly across the stack, including developer documentation, technical tutorials, internal tooling, and experimental builds that showcase and stress-test platform APIs.
What We're Looking For
Required: 1+ years of professional experience shipping software to production.
Hands-on experience with APIs, distributed systems, microservices, and data pipelines.
Comfort working with LLMs, AI agents, and knowledge graph or identity resolution systems is a strong plus.
Experience with cloud infrastructure (AWS or GCP) and Linux server environments.
Strong instincts for performance, reliability, and cost-efficient system design.
High agency — you move fast, take ownership, and operate well with limited direction.
First-principles thinker who is energized by building 0-to-1 in a fast-moving environment.
Compensation & Benefits
Salary: $150,000 – $220,000 USD annually
Early-stage equity as a founding team member
Note: Visa sponsorship is not available for this role
Location
This is an on-site role based in San Francisco, CA. Candidates must be available to work in-person.
Source: Clera on Ashby · View original posting (opens in new tab)
This listingFounding Engineer$150K to $220K
Medical AI Researcher$150K to $230K
Head of Marketing$150K to $240K
Founding Product Designer$150K to $250K
Platform Engineer (Kubernetes)$150K to $200K
Senior Member of Technical Staff$150K to $215K
Founding Engineer$150K to $220K
Chart as a table
| Role | Published base |
|---|---|
| Founding Engineer (this listing) | $150K - $220K |
| Medical AI Researcher | $150K - $230K |
| Head of Marketing | $150K - $240K |
| Founding Product Designer | $150K - $250K |
| Platform Engineer (Kubernetes) | $150K - $200K |
| Senior Member of Technical Staff | $150K - $215K |
| Founding Engineer | $150K - $220K |
Observed changes
- First observed on the employer's board
- Began meeting the published-salary criteria
- fields changed
- Observed since
- Employer-stated posting date
- 2026-06-03
Where this pay comes from
Location as the employer wrote it: San Francisco
- Salary: $150,000 – $220,000 USD annually
- Method
- Employer text, read with fixed rules and re-verified
- Checked
- Rule set
- us-base-v2
The pay passage appears in the employer's own job text. Fixed, deterministic rules located it, and the passage below was checked against the stored copy of the posting.
What we verified
- The pay figures come from the employer's own listing, quoted exactly above.
- The pay is an annual base salary in US dollars with a minimum of at least $100,000.
- The role was publicly listed on the employer's job board when last checked.
We do not verify what the employer will actually offer, whether the employer is still recruiting for the role, or anything beyond what the employer published. Full methodology.
