Founding Engineer
full-time•on-site•San Francisco•$130k - $160k+ Competitive
About this role
About This Role
The Opportunity
75% of the best candidates never apply to jobs. They're not looking. They're building.
We're building AI agents that do the actual work of recruiting: finding passive candidates, reaching out, qualifying, coaching, scheduling. End to end. No job boards. No applications. Direct connections between great people and great companies.
We raised a pre-seed from top investors and have been growing to marketplace scale (40K+ talents, hundreds of top startup customers). Now we need someone to help build the infrastructure that scales this 100x.
The Role
You'll work directly with our CTO Daniel and ship to production daily. This isn't ticket duty. You'll own entire systems and see them in the hands of users the same week.
Location: San Francisco · Visa sponsorship available
Ownership Areas
You'll take ownership of one or more of these systems as we scale:
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Candidate Data Infrastructure - "Senior SWE" and "Sr. Software Engineer" are the same thing, but keyword search doesn't know that. Build the pipeline that parses resumes, pulls from LinkedIn and GitHub, uses LLMs to extract real skills and seniority, and handles 10K+ outbound messages a day without landing in spam.
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Agentic Conversation System - Build the agents that text candidates, answer their questions about comp and role details, handle objections, and book calls. Without sounding like a bot or getting facts wrong.
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Real-Time Matching Engine - Our AI agent needs to find "React engineer, 3-5 years, SF" and return the right people in under 100ms. Knowing that "React.js" and "ReactJS" are the same, and that 4 years at Google means something different than 4 years at a seed startup.
Tech Stack
TypeScript, React, Next.js, Supabase, Prisma, Typesense, OpenAI/Claude APIs, Trigger.dev
Who You Are
We're not checking boxes. We want someone who's done hard things and can show their work.
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You've shipped production systems that handle real scale. User load, data volume, or complexity that breaks naive approaches.
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You're comfortable across the stack. Build a React component in the morning, debug a database query in the afternoon.
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You've worked with LLMs beyond basic prompting. Embeddings, RAG, agent architectures, or similar.
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You make decisions with incomplete information. Ship, learn, iterate. Not wait for perfect specs.
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You've built something from scratch. Side project, startup, internal tool. Something you owned end-to-end.
Don't have all of these? If you've done something impressive that's not on this list, we want to hear about it.
Founding Team
Small team, big ambitions. You'll work directly with the founders.
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Sebastian (CEO) - Serial founder, started first company at 17. Scaled learning platform to 15K users, built AI agents for German OEMs.
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Daniel (CTO) - 3x founder. Head of Engineering at Lofino (acquired), led 15 engineers. Co-founded a VC-backed marketplace.
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Alexander (COO) - Scaled SaaS to €10M ARR as Chief of Staff. 800+ interviews, 30 hires. Runs ops and GTM.
What You Get
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Competitive salary + meaningful equity
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Visa sponsorship available
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Health insurance
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Learning & development budget
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San Francisco base with flexible setup
Interview Process
We respect your time. No endless rounds.
1.
Intro call - 15–30 min with a co-founder. Your background, what you're looking for, and more on Clera.
2.
Technical deep-dive - 30 min with Daniel. Past projects, how you think about systems.
3.
Take-home challenge - Small project reflecting real work. 2–4 hours, AI coding tools encouraged.
4.
Code review - Walk through your take-home challenge with Daniel.
5.
Final conversation - Meet the remaining team, ask us anything.
Interview process
- 1Intro Call
- 2Technical Deep-Dive
- 3Take-Home Challenge
- 4Code Review
- 5Final Conversation
About Clera
Clera is a fast-growing AI start-up that is changing how top talents find jobs with AI start-ups. We are working with some of the leading companies like Luminai, Windsurf and mintlify.
We are convinced that the recruiting process needs to be talent-first to make it easy to get in touch with those companies, be coached in the journey and actually get hired.
Our culture
- Fast-paced startup
- Talent-first
- High ownership
- Collaborative
Our Team
Product Showcase
Ready to join Clera?
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Frequently Asked Questions
What does Clera pay for a Founding Engineer?
Clera offers a competitive compensation package for the Founding Engineer role. The salary range is USD 130k - 160k per year, plus Competitive equity. Apply through Clera to learn more about the full compensation details.
What does a Founding Engineer do at Clera?
The Founding Engineer role at Clera involves About This Role The Opportunity 75% of the best candidates never apply to jobs. They're not looking.
Is the Founding Engineer position at Clera remote?
The Founding Engineer position at Clera is based in San Francisco, United States and is on-site. Contact the company through Clera for specific work arrangement details.
How do I apply for the Founding Engineer position at Clera?
You can apply for the Founding Engineer position at Cleradirectly through Clera. Click the "Apply Now" button above to start your application. Clera's AI-powered platform will help match your profile with this opportunity and guide you through the application process.