Role description: This role is with one of our portfolio companies.
We are hiring a Founding Engineer/Leader for one of our early-stage portfolio companies. This is not a typical engineering leadership role; you will be the first engineering hire. You will own the architecture, make irreversible technical decisions, and ship production systems in a domain where accuracy and compliance are essential.
In this role, you will collaborate directly with the founder to build AI agents that automate complex, multi-system finance workflows. This position focuses less on a feature roadmap and more on the challenge of making these agents effectively handle edge cases that can stump humans.
Key Responsibilities:
- Architecture & Technical Direction — Design the end-to-end system, including agent orchestration, multi-system integrations (ERP, banking, procurement, email), data pipelines, and compliance guardrails. Your decisions will be the foundation upon which the company builds.
- Agentic AI Systems — Build, deploy, and iterate on production-grade AI agents capable of autonomous multi-step task execution, exception handling, and self-correction — not demos, not prototypes.
- Ensure that auditability, data residency, and segregation of duties are integrated from day one. Given the regulated nature of this domain, correctness is a product requirement.
- Team Building — Hire and retain a 5–8 person engineering team as the company scales. You set the bar on engineering culture, code quality, and technical hiring standards.
- Have experience with fast-paced, rapidly iterating, design-forward, product-focused companies.
- Exhibit a roll-up-your-sleeves entrepreneurial spirit, be a team player, and have a track record of leading and mentoring employees.
What We're Looking For:
Must-Haves
- BS/MS/Phd degree in engineering/technology.
- 8–14 years of engineering experience, with at least 2 years in a hands-on technical leadership role (led a team, owned architecture, drove delivery).
- AI-Native Builder — Has designed and shipped production agentic or multi-step AI systems.
- Full-Stack Systems Thinking — Comfortable across the stack: backend services, data engineering, API integrations, and infrastructure. Able to dive deep as needed.
- Prior experience building on top of ERP or enterprise SaaS APIs. Understands the pain of working with legacy systems, inconsistent schemas, and enterprise IT constraints.
- Worked at an AI-native company or a high-velocity startup — not just an AI feature inside a large org.
Strong Differentiators
- Prior experience as a founding engineer or in an early-stage startup (0→1 journey).
- Background in fintech, ERP automation, or enterprise workflow automation
- Experience with LLM fine-tuning, RAG architectures, or agent frameworks (such as LangGraph, CrewAI, AutoGen, or equivalent)
- Exposure to finance and accountingworkflows — AP, AR, reconciliation, month-end close
- Has hired and managed engineers before
Note: We will check the fitment for multiple roles across our portfolios.
