Founding Engineer

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in California.

📋 Description

• You will take charge of various aspects within both product and engineering.

• Crafting engaging learning experiences that students truly enjoy.

• Assisting each student in achieving measurable progress through personalized, AI-driven tutoring.

• Determining how Athena retains knowledge of what students understand and decides their next learning steps.

• Developing systems to evaluate whether students are genuinely learning rather than merely completing tasks.

• Establishing the engineering frameworks, tools, and standards that enable Athena to scale efficiently.

• Collaborating with the founder on product vision, technical strategy, and team building in engineering.

⛳️ Requirements

• Proven experience in developing and delivering production software across various layers of the technology stack, having created complete products that real users rely on.

• Strong instincts in product development and engineering judgment; you can tell when something is incomplete.

• Unparalleled attention to user experience and product excellence; you focus on details that often go unnoticed by others.

• Capability to transform vague concepts into refined, user-friendly products.

• Experience in direct communication with users, integrating their feedback into product development; you frequently engage with users since product intuition is built beyond mere analytics.

• A history of functioning independently in early-stage or rapidly evolving environments.

• AI enhances your efficiency without reducing rigor, speeding up development while maintaining quality standards.

• You are eager to dedicate the next several years to building something from the ground up.

• Experience as an early engineer or founder (Nice to Have).

• Background in developing consumer products (Nice to Have).

• Experience in creating AI-native products (Nice to Have).

• Familiarity with LLMs, agents, retrieval systems, evaluation frameworks, or AI infrastructure (Nice to Have).

• A strong passion for education and helping individuals learn (Nice to Have).

🏝️ Benefits

• A pivotal role as the inaugural engineer in an AI-native education organization.

• Direct collaboration with the founder on product and technical strategies.

• Competitive salary along with significant equity options.

• Responsibility for both technical and product direction from the outset.

• The chance to influence the future of personalized education.