Founding Engineer

Role Overview:

• Join a Shaper portfolio company at the ground floor as the technical co-builder, standing up the engineering foundation alongside its founder.
• Start from a blank slate, take wide ownership across the whole stack, and define architecture, ship the first product version, and make technical calls.
• Work shoulder-to-shoulder with a founding CEO and learn what it takes to build a category-defining company from the inside.

Key Responsibilities:

• Own the technical foundation: build the first version of the product end-to-end from initial architecture decisions through shipping to real customers.
• Partner directly with the founding CEO: talk directly with customers and help set technical direction and roadmap alongside leadership.
• Establish engineering culture and tooling: build technical foundations, tooling, and engineering practices that the company will scale on as the team grows.

Who You Are:

• Have strong generalist engineering experience, having built and shipped real products, ideally as an early engineering hire at a startup.
• Move fluidly across the stack, pick things up quickly, execute ruthlessly, and are entrepreneurial, loving close customer work.
• Make quick, thoughtful calls balancing short-term speed with long-term health and are comfortable using AI-assisted development.