The Founding Engineer will own full project lifecycles, develop an AI-powered platform, and help shape company culture. Responsibilities include building backend and frontend components and addressing complex real-time AI challenges.
We’re Nerve, and we’re building the AI “supercomputer coworker” every startup wishes they had. We’ve seen firsthand from our previous jobs (Brex, Coinbase, Box, YC startups) how hard it is to scale a company from a handful of people to hundreds. Our answer? Give every team a ridiculously smart AI that drafts docs, answers questions, and lets humans focus on the stuff only they can do.
We’re a tiny, talent-dense team in SF, and we’re looking for a founding engineer who wants to build, own, and ship product fast. You’ll work shoulder-to-shoulder with the founders, have a say in everything, and get to shape the company from day one. If you want to level up your technical/leadership game (maybe even start your own thing one day), you’ll get autonomy, mentorship, and a front-row seat to the early-stage chaos.
What you’ll do:
- Own big projects end-to-end, from idea to shipped product (and sweat the details).
- Build and scale our AI-powered platform: backend (Python, async jobs with Celery/Airflow), frontend (React, Next.js, Tailwind).1
- Tackle hard, interesting problems (high-throughput, real-time AI integrations, etc.).
- Help set the culture and direction as we grow.
You might be a fit if:
- You’ve got 2-6 years of engineering experience and love building across the stack.
- You know your way around Python and async systems.
- You can ship beautiful UIs with React/Next.js/Tailwind.
- You’ve worked at a startup or fast-growing company before.
- You’re curious, hungry, and want to work in-person (SF, 4 days a week).
- Bonus: You’re into AI/ML (or want to be).
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