Founding Software Engineer

Founding Engineer at AlignAI

Compensation: $150k – $200k

• 0.5% – 1.0% equity

Overview

AlignAI is revolutionizing how enterprises adopt and govern AI. We're solving the critical challenge that causes 80% of enterprise AI projects to fail today: misalignment between business goals and technical reality. As our founding engineer, you'll architect and build the platform that bridges this gap, enabling enterprises to design, implement, and govern AI systems that deliver real business value.

Why Join AlignAI Now

Enterprise AI has reached a crucial tipping point: organizations are shifting from experimental pilots to demanding tangible business outcomes. With AI projected to add $15.7 trillion to the global economy by 2030, companies need AlignAI's platform to align their teams and capture their share of this massive opportunity. This is a ground-floor opportunity to shape how leading enterprises extract value from AI in a high-growth, high-visibility environment.

As our first full-time engineering hire in a funded, growing startup, you'll:

• Shape our technical architecture and engineering culture from the ground up
• Build a product used by AI teams in Fortune 1000 companies
• Receive competitive compensation with meaningful equity that reflects your foundational contribution
• Grow into a leadership role as we scale

Typical Day (Key Responsibilities)

Hands-On Development

• Full-stack implementation: Build features across the entire stack (UI, backend/API, integrations) with a focus on user experience
• AI/ML integration: Implement conversational and generative AI functionality that accelerates enterprise AI adoption
• Enterprise security: Develop security features including SAML, SSO, and compliance requirements needed for enterprise B2B SaaS
• Customer-facing features: Create intuitive interfaces that empower enterprises to design AI solutions and align technical teams

Technical Leadership & Architecture

• Lead architectural decisions: Drive the technical vision and make critical infrastructure choices for our enterprise-grade platform
• Steward code quality: Establish coding standards, manage pull requests, conduct code reviews, and maintain high-quality codebase standards
• Guide technology stack: Leverage and extend our Next.js/Vercel/Supabase foundation while making strategic technology decisions
• Build for enterprise scale: Design systems that can handle Fortune 1000 enterprise requirements for security, compliance, and performance

Team Building & Culture

• Establish engineering practices: Implement automated testing, CI/CD pipelines, and development methodologies that support rapid growth
• Build for scale: Create the foundation for future engineering hires and establish practices that will support team expansion
• Collaborate cross-functionally: Work closely with product, customer success, and leadership teams to prioritize features and ensure technical feasibility

Technical Challenges You'll Solve

• Create an intuitive interface to empower enterprises to design AI solutions and align with technical teams
• Build a scalable platform that captures enterprise context and generates intelligence on AI use cases, governance, and risk
• Implement enterprise-grade security features and integrations required by Fortune 1000 customers
• Create an architecture that supports scalable AI and agentic functionality and AIOps
• Develop AI-powered features that accelerate the creation of policies, controls, and standards for enterprise AI

Requirements

Must-Have Technical Experience

• 7+ years of full-stack web application development with proven track record building enterprise SaaS products
• Hands-on expertise with our stack: Next.js, React, Vercel, and Supabase
• AI engineering/architecture experience: Demonstrated experience integrating conversational and generative AI functionality
• Enterprise security implementation: Experience with SAML, SSO, and other enterprise security requirements
• Architectural decision-making: Comfortable making and owning technical architecture decisions

Must-Have Leadership Experience

• Technical leadership: Experience as lead engineer on a team, with responsibility for technical direction
• Code stewardship: Experience managing code quality, conducting code reviews, and approving pull requests
• Startup environment: Demonstrated success in startup or fast-paced environments with comfort in ambiguous situations
• Hiring engineers: Evaluated and made hiring decisions for engineering roles.

Nice-to-Have

• Team management: Experience managing direct reports and building engineering teams
• Customer-facing ability: Comfortable interfacing with enterprise customers and stakeholders
• Thought leadership: Interest in becoming a public-facing technical thought leader
• Enterprise B2B SaaS: Background building products for large financial, manufacturing, or healthcare enterprises
• Testing & CI/CD: Experience with automated testing frameworks and deployment pipelines

Cultural Fit & Values

• Mission alignment: Strong belief in AlignAI's vision to bridge the gap between business goals and technical AI implementation
• Startup mindset: Enjoys early-stage roles and thrives in dynamic, fast-paced environments
• Calm under pressure: Laid-back personality that performs well under pressure and in chaotic startup environments
• Customer obsession: Commitment to building products that solve real enterprise problems

What We Offer

• Competitive compensation: $150k-$200k base salary
• Meaningful equity: 0.5%-1.0% equity stake reflecting your foundational contribution
• Growth opportunity: Path to engineering leadership as we scale
• Flexible work: Remote-first with quarterly in-person collaboration sessions in Columbus, Ohio
• Impact: Direct influence on product direction and company success
• Enterprise customers: Work with Fortune 1000 companies implementing cutting-edge AI solutions

Location & Work Style

• Remote-first: Work from anywhere in the US
• Preferred timezones: Pacific, Mountain, Central, Eastern, Atlantic, Central European Time
• Collaboration: Quarterly in-person sessions in Columbus, Ohio
• Travel: Occasional customer visits and team meetings