Founding Engineer, Data Reliability Agent Platform Manhattan, NY | $160k to $260k + Equity | In-person | Pre-seed

"Yeah baby, this is not your average backend role."
Some engineering jobs ask you to maintain a dusty dashboard, fix Jira tickets and pretend the roadmap is exciting.
This is not that, baby.
Tiny warning: this one is Austin Powers-inspired, because apparently serious AI infrastructure roles can still have mojo.
This is a Founding Engineer role at a pre-seed AI startup building an agent system for data reliability.Companies rely on CRMs, ERPs and messy systems of record to run sales, reporting and operations. The problem? The data is often about as reliable as Dr Evil’s business plan for "one billion dollars."And now AI agents are writing data everywhere, making the mess even messier.This company is fixing that by restructuring and linking messy business data into a company graph that agents can actually trust. Then its agent system cleans up data autonomously, while still keeping governance, security and human-in-the-loop workflows where they matter.They have raised $4.5M in pre-seed funding, have design partners actively using the product daily, and are now hiring some of their first engineers.This is proper 0 to 1 territory.You will build, ship, talk to customers, learn fast and help shape the product from the inside.
THE MISSION, SHOULD YOU CHOOSE TO ACCEPT IT
You will work directly with the founders on product vision and implementation. You will not be hidden in the backend bunker. You will be building the product, talking to design partners, understanding real data problems, shipping solutions and improving the platform based on actual usage.The role is full-stack leaning backend. Backend depth matters, but product intuition matters too. You need to care about correctness, reliability, customer pain and speed.
YOU WILL OWN
• End-to-end product development, from design through production• Core infrastructure and backend systems for the data-reliability platform• Data restructuring and linking logic that powers the company graph• Customer conversations with design partners• Fast iteration based on feedback and usage patterns• Production-grade systems handling sensitive business data
Basically, you are not just building features. You are helping build the machine that helps other companies stop drowning in their own data soup. Groovy.
WHO THIS IS RIDICULOUSLY GOOD FOR
You might be 1 to 2 years out of a top school, already moving fast, AI-native, hungry and ready to grow at startup speed.Or you might have 5+ years at a high-bar company or strong startup and now want to go earlier, closer to the product, closer to the founders and closer to the chaos.Either way, you should be smart, ambitious, hard-working, curious and allergic to coasting.
THE DREAM PROFILE LOOKS LIKE
• 1 to 5 years of experience, or an exceptional new grad• Top academic background, ideally Waterloo or a top US university• Daily user of Claude, Cursor or similar AI tools• Strong backend engineering ability, with enough frontend exposure to ship product• Evidence you have shipped production code or built meaningful projects• Comfort talking to customers and turning messy requirements into working software• Strong product instincts, not just "give me a ticket and I’ll code it"• Side projects, startup experience, founding engineer experience or real self-directed shipping
Nice bonus points if you have worked somewhere with a serious hiring bar, think Palantir, Scale AI, Stripe, Notion, Figma, Robinhood, Airtable or Rippling.Also very interesting if you have built data pipelines, worked on systems design, scaled products or started something of your own.
GREEN FLAGS, BABY
You will stand out if you have:• Founder or founding engineer experience• Clear career growth, especially early in your career• A top school background and obvious learning velocity• Personal projects or products shipped to real users• Strong AI-native workflow, not just "I tried ChatGPT once"• Real hunger for pre-seed life• The ability to explain why you want early-stage, not just why you want a pay rise• Comfort being in Manhattan 5 days a week
RED FLAGS, AND NOT THE GROOVY KIND
This probably is not right if you are:• A heavy job hopper without a good reason• Applying to every startup on the internet with the same copy-paste pitch• Only from big tech with no startup exposure or appetite for ambiguity• Not willing to be in-person in Manhattan 5 days a week• Looking for a neatly scoped backend-only role with no customer contact• Uncomfortable with speed, ambiguity, changing requirements or founder-level intensity• Not genuinely AI-native
No offence, but this is a "grab the wheel and build the rocket" role. Not a "where is the onboarding wiki?" role.
WHY THIS IS EXCITING
Because the company is early enough that your fingerprints will be everywhere, but not so early that the product is just a Figma file and a prayer.They have funding. They have active design partners. They have a real, painful problem in a massive market.And they are building in the exact messy intersection of AI agents, data reliability, company graphs, workflow automation and secure enterprise systems.That is a pretty tasty cocktail, baby.
THE DETAILS
• Location: Manhattan, NY• Work style: In-person• Salary: $160,000 to $260,000• Type: Full-time• Stage: Pre-seed• Team size: 1 to 10• Visa: H-1B, O-1 and OPT supported• Perks: 20 days PTO, 99%+ employer-paid medical, dental and vision insurance, 401k with 4% match, lunch stipend in office and dinner stipend when staying late.
FINAL WORD
This is for the engineer who wants to be early, move fast, build real product, talk to real customers and help define the technical foundations of an AI company from the ground up.If you are smart, hungry, AI-native, backend-strong and ready to build something properly hard in Manhattan, then yeah baby, this one is worth a look.