Your first engineers set the technical direction and the culture. We look for builders with judgment, not just speed.
Start a searchThe best founding engineers are rarely job hunting. They are senior engineers at growth-stage companies, former founders and early employees from startups that were acquired. We reach them with the specifics that matter to them: the problem, the founders and the equity.
We turn the hiring manager's real bar into a behavioural scorecard: what great looks like in the first 90 days, which trade-offs matter, and which signals on a CV are noise.
AI tooling maps the market, including engineers who are not on job boards and people whose titles do not match what they actually build.
Every candidate who is advanced or rejected is reviewed by a person. Shortlists come with written reasoning you can audit, not a black-box score.
Structured interviews and behavioural assessment test judgment, ownership and how someone ships under ambiguity, which is what separates strong AI engineers from strong interviewers.
Range, judgment and ownership. A good founding engineer can ship across the stack, make pragmatic technical decisions, talk to users and take responsibility for outcomes when there is no process to lean on.
We look at what they built with little structure, then use structured interviews and behavioural assessment to test judgment, ownership and how they handle ambiguity. Founders meet every finalist, and a human makes every shortlist decision.
Yes. We help founders set expectations on title, scope and equity early, so the offer stage does not surprise either side.
Tell us the role and where the pipeline is stuck. You'll hear back within one business day with a scope, a timeline, and a fee.
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