Software Engineer

Founding Engineer | Applied AI

📍 San Francisco, CA | 4+ days/week in person

💰 $250K base + 10% equity

🧠 4+ years of software engineering experience

About the Company & Role

An early-stage legal AI company is building a new kind of law firm designed to function like primary care for legal services: helping people understand their legal needs and connecting them with the right attorney.

A core part of the platform is a conversational AI intake receptionist that integrates directly with law firms' phone systems and websites, understands incoming legal inquiries, and routes clients to the appropriate resources.

The product is already working. Now the company is hiring its first engineer to work directly with the Founder and turn the existing prototype into a reliable, secure, production-grade platform.

This is a true founding role with significant influence over the product, architecture, technical direction, and future engineering organization.

What You'll Own

• Take the existing conversational AI product from prototype to production-grade reliability
• Own the voice AI intake experience across live calls and web-based intake
• Build the full-stack referral platform connecting attorneys, partner firms, and clients
• Design systems that safely handle sensitive client information and funds
• Own privacy, security, reliability, and production infrastructure
• Work directly with partner firms to implement and integrate the product
• Integrate with existing phone systems, call routing, telephony, and IVR environments
• Build new product workflows based directly on feedback from firms and users
• Help shape technical strategy as the company's first engineering hire

What We're Looking For

• 4+ years of professional software engineering experience
• Recent hands-on experience building applied AI products used by real customers
• Experience taking an early product or prototype into production
• Strong ownership of production reliability, security, and/or privacy
• Full-stack capability and comfort owning products end-to-end
• Experience building customer-facing software
• Comfortable working directly with customers or partners during implementation and troubleshooting
• Excited by a highly autonomous, early-stage startup environment
• Based in the Bay Area or willing to relocate
• Comfortable working in person in San Francisco at least 4 days per week

Especially Relevant Backgrounds

Experience in any of the following is a strong plus, but not required:

• Voice AI or conversational AI
• Telephony, SIP, call routing, or IVR
• Healthcare AI, particularly intake, scribing, or triage
• Legal AI
• High-stakes AI products involving sensitive data
• Forward-deployed or customer-facing engineering

Why This Role Stands Out

🚀 First engineering hire with meaningful influence over what gets built and how

🧠 Real applied AI problems, not AI added as a feature after the fact

🔐 Engineering challenges centered around reliability, privacy, security, and high-stakes real-world usage

🤝 Direct exposure to customers and the Founder rather than layers of product and engineering management

📈 Early enough to meaningfully shape the company, product, and future technical team

Compensation & Benefits

• $250,000 base salary
• 10% equity
• Health insurance
• Free lunch
• Relocation support for the right candidate
• Potential U.S. visa sponsorship/transfer for candidates already based in the United States

This is best suited for an engineer who wants substantial ownership, enjoys operating without a predefined playbook, and wants to help build both the product and the engineering foundation of a company from the earliest stage.