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One of RippleMatch’s partners is looking for a mission-driven Founding Engineer based in San Francisco.
The Role
As a founding engineer, you’ll work side-by-side with the founders to radically improve how military teams prepare for urgent, global missions. You’ll own the full product lifecycle—from discovery and architecture to launch and iteration—and you’ll help shape company culture, engineering practices, and product strategy. If the idea of building with users on base and shipping software that directly impacts operational missions excites you, this role is a great fit.
What You’ll Do- Own major product areas end-to-end: clarify user needs, define scope, design systems, implement, test, and ship.
- Build AI-enabled, collaboration-first features that streamline readiness tracking and unit workflows.
- Partner directly with service members (on-site ~1x/month) to translate real-world constraints into product improvements.
- Establish and champion engineering best practices (testing, observability, security, DevOps) for a high-velocity team.
- Contribute to key company decisions across product, process, and culture.
- Typescript expertise and full-stack experience with modern web frameworks (React, Next, Express).
- Proficiency with PostgreSQL (or other SQL databases) and AWS (or another major cloud).
- Track record of shipping production-quality code frequently.
- Low ego, high ownership, strong attention to detail, and a bias for learning and impact.
- U.S. citizenship (required).
- Willingness to work in-person in downtown San Francisco and travel to military bases ~1x/month.
- Experience with Kubernetes.
- Comfort with open-source infra in secure deployments (e.g., Grafana, Loki, Keycloak).
- Familiarity with DoD security/compliance frameworks.
- Hands-on experience integrating LLMs into production workflows.
- Background in military operations or veteran experience.
- Active U.S. security clearance.
- $140k–$190k salary + 0.5%–1.5% equity (founding-team level).
- Competitive health benefits.
- Free dinners.
- High-trust, high-impact environment with direct user access and clear ownership.
Top Skills
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