Founding Engineer

About iGrow:
iGrow is an AI conversation-practice platform (web, iOS, Android) for critical career discussions—salary negotiations, tough feedback, and interviews. Founded by alumni from Google, Meta, Walmart, EY, and Salesforce, we are hiring our first senior technical team member to own the technology function outright.

The Role: Founding Engineer A hands-on, high-ownership role at a pre-revenue-scale startup. You will write production code daily, architect systems, enforce standards, manage releases, and build our technical foundation—eventually hiring and scaling the team post-raise.

What You Will Own

• Product Architecture & Coding: Architect and scale the web, mobile, and backend systems (built to handle high usage) while writing daily production code and deliberately managing technical debt.
• Multi-Platform Delivery: Maintain web, iOS, and Android platforms from a shared codebase. Own native build pipelines, app store releases, in-app purchases, and Core Web Vitals CI budgets.
• AI & LLM Engineering: Design provider-portable AI counterparts, behavioral scoring engines, and longitudinal profiles. Focus on structured outputs, fallback reliability, evaluation harnesses, and strict session cost ceilings.
• Roadmap & Discovery: Translate founder/customer intent into technical requirements, conduct B2B/user discovery, and sequence roadmap priorities by prerequisite over enthusiasm.
• UI/UX Polish: Maintain design system tokens, accessibility, and visual restraint to ensure a finished, high-quality user experience.
• Security & Compliance: Own threat modeling, row-level data isolation, and privacy-by-design standards. Complete enterprise security questionnaires alongside the CEO (ex-security auditor).
• QA & Monitoring: Set testing strategies, require verified event analytics for all new features, and lead incident triage.
• External Leadership: Present architecture and defensibility to investors, lead technical discussions in enterprise sales, and mentor junior engineers.

Your First 90 Days

• Days 1–30: Audit existing codebase, performance, security, and analytics; deliver a keep/fix/replace roadmap.
• Days 31–60: Own an end-to-end multi-platform release and establish testing, review, and release standards.
• Days 61–90: Define the 2-quarter technical roadmap (AI architecture, cost, and prerequisites) and present it to investors.

Who You Are
Requirements:

• Demonstrated track record scaling production apps from early users through heavy growth.
• Full-stack proficiency with TypeScript, React/Next.js, Postgres, and cross-platform mobile app store delivery.
• Production experience with LLM APIs (structured outputs, evals, failure modes, cost caps).
• Security-first mindset (auth, data isolation, privacy compliance).
• Clear communication with founders, investors, and enterprise clients.

Preferred: UI/UX design system experience, founding/early-stage startup backgrounds, enterprise B2B exposure (SSO, DPAs).

Not For You If: You prefer managing over writing code, require established QA/process setups, or need a narrow, static role.

What We Offer
Equity: % founding equity (1-year cliff).
Autonomy & Perks: Full tech ownership, direct founder partnership, flexible/remote working, and NVIDIA Inception program benefits.

We offer meaningful founding equity with a standard one-year cliff, cash compensation that scales to market rates post-funding, complete technology ownership, direct partnership with the founders, a flexible remote work environment, and access to NVIDIA Inception program benefits.

How to Apply Email [email protected] or apply via LinkedIn with a link to a product you’ve shipped (repo, web app, or app store listing) and a brief note on the hardest technical decision you owned and what you learned from it.