Founding Engineer

Founding Engineer

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Location: New York City (Chelsea) — on-siteType: Full-time Stage: Early-stage, well-funded startupCompensation: Up to $260K base, depending on experience, plus 1–2% equity
About the CompanyWe're an early-stage startup, backed by leading crypto and fintech investors, building next-generation markets and trading infrastructure. Our team is small, technical, and moves fast. Every engineer we hire has an outsized impact on the product and the company's trajectory. We're past the idea stage: the product is live, the team is scaling, and we're looking for someone who wants to help define how the product is built from the ground up rather than inherit someone else's architecture.We can't share the company name publicly at this stage of the search, but we're happy to disclose it in a first conversation.
The RoleWe're hiring a Founding Engineer to take ownership of our product end to end, with real depth on the client-facing experience. This is not a "join an engineering team" role. It's a "be the person who shapes the architecture" role. You'll make the foundational technical decisions (state management, application structure, APIs, performance, tooling) as much as you'll ship features.We're open to engineers from a range of backgrounds: frontend-leaning full-stack, full-stack, or frontend engineers with real backend and systems depth. You don't need to have held a "Founding Engineer" title before. What matters is that you're comfortable owning a lot of surface area, making architectural calls without a big team to lean on, and moving with the pace and ambiguity of an early-stage environment.
What You'll DoOwn and lead development of a consumer-facing trading and markets product, where performance and correctness both matterMake architectural decisions across the stack, from the UI and complex application state to the APIs and data flows behind itBuild fast, reliable, real-time experiences and ship them quicklyWork directly with the founders to turn product vision into a polished, production-grade productSet the technical standards (code quality, testing, tooling, performance) as the team growsMake pragmatic build-vs-perfect tradeoffs appropriate to an early-stage company, without cutting corners that create real risk
What We're Looking ForStrong hands-on experience with React, Next.js, and TypeScript in productionComfort working across the stack: you can design and build APIs and services, and you understand how the pieces fit together, not only the UI layerA track record of owning a substantial piece of a product, not just contributing to one, even if that wasn't at an official "founding" companyComfort working independently and making architectural decisions with minimal oversightGenuine interest in fintech, trading, or markets-adjacent products. Prior domain experience is a strong plus but not required if you can show sharp product judgmentRoughly 2–8 years of professional engineering experienceA history of sticking with roles and seeing projects through. xzbcwsv We're looking for someone who wants to build something over years, not monthsBased in or willing to relocate to the NYC metro area; this is an on-site role in Chelsea
What Would Make You a Great FitYou've been the sole or primary owner of a significant codebase or product before, at any size companyYou care as much about how something feels to use as how it's builtYou're energized, not intimidated, by having no large team to hide behindYou want real ownership and are comfortable with the tradeoff that comes with it: high autonomy, high accountability
What This Role Is NotThis is not a role for someone who wants a large, established team structure around themThis is not a short-term contract engagement. We're hiring for a long-term, foundational team member
What We OfferUp to $260K base salary, depending on experience1–2% equity — true founding-engineer ownershipDirect work with the founders on product and technical directionA fast process: we can run the entire interview process in about two weeks and are committed to filling this role quickly