Founding Engineer
At a glance
Mid-level Software Engineering role at Clera. San Francisco · full-time · $150,000–$250,000 base.
techroles summary, based on the employer's posting.
What you'll do
- Build search and ranking systems across a dataset containing more than two hundred million places and millions of events
- Develop personalized place and event recommendations using embeddings, structured information and social signals
- Create fast real-time systems for chat, user presence and location
- Build AI agent pipelines and data workflows that organize varied, unstructured web information
- Make end-to-end product and architecture decisions, including how maps highlight relevant places
What you bring
- You have up to five years of professional software engineering experience
- You have built production systems that respond in real time or with low latency
- You can work with search and ranking methods and the infrastructure behind them
- You bring experience in data pipelines, AI or machine-learning workflows, or data engineering
- You have improved infrastructure performance at scale
Who this fits
This role suits an engineer who can take features from interface through backend, make architectural calls and work across product, design and engineering. You'll need to be comfortable with ambiguity and quick decisions. The position is on-site in San Francisco, and you must live there or be willing to relocate. You must be authorized to work in the United States without visa sponsorship.
From the employer
About the Role
Join a well-funded (Series A/B), stealth-stage consumer tech startup building an AI-powered map and social discovery platform. The product helps people figure out where to go and what to do — combining one of the largest structured indices of real-world places and events with a clever, social product experience.
As a Founding Engineer, you'll own problems end-to-end, work directly with founders, and make architectural decisions that shape the core system. This is a high-ownership, high-impact role for someone who thrives in ambiguity and moves fast.
What You'll Work On
Search and ranking at massive scale (200M+ places, millions of events)
Recommendations and personalization of places and events using embeddings, structured data, and social signals
Real-time infrastructure — chat, presence, and location systems that feel instantaneous
AI agent pipelines that plan, retrieve, and reason over diverse data sources
Map display algorithms that determine what deserves attention
Data pipelines that structure large volumes of unstructured web data for novel product experiences
Pushing Elasticsearch and vector search to sub-100ms latency across large datasets
Engineering Tracks
You don't need to fit neatly into one area — most people here won't.
Application Engineer (Full-Stack)
Build fast, expressive interfaces across mobile and web
Own features end-to-end from UI to backend
Tools: TypeScript, React, React Native, iOS/Android
Data / AI Engineer
Build the intelligence layer — search, ranking, pipelines, and agent systems
Design systems that operate over large-scale, messy real-world data
Tools: Python, TypeScript, Elasticsearch, Snowflake, LLMs, embeddings, retrieval and recommendation systems
What We're Looking For
0–5 years of professional software engineering experience
Proven experience building real-time or low-latency production systems
Proficiency in search, ranking algorithms, and related infrastructure
Experience with data processing pipelines, ML/AI workflows, or data engineering
Track record of infrastructure and performance optimization at scale
Prior experience at early-stage startups; comfortable operating with high ambiguity
Ability to own features end-to-end with cross-functional collaboration (product, design, engineering)
Strong problem-solving and fast decision-making in fast-paced environments
You care about how something feels, not just whether it works
Compensation & Benefits
Salary: $150,000 – $250,000 USD annually
Equity as a founding team member
Location
San Francisco, CA — on-site required
Candidates must be located in or willing to relocate to San Francisco
No visa sponsorship available — must be eligible to work in the United States without sponsorship
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