• Startup Job BoardStartup Job Board
  • Weekly Job DropWeekly Job Drop
  • Axira AIAxira AI
  • PricingPricing
  • Career ResourcesCareer Resources
  • Why Candidates Choose UsWhy Candidates Choose Us
  • Compensation CalculatorCompensation Calculator
  • Hiring ResourcesHiring Resources
  • Why Founders Choose UsWhy Founders Choose Us
  • Screen Candidates with AIScreen Candidates with AI
  • ArticlesArticles
logo of foundersarehiring
  • Startup Job Board
  • For Founders
  • For Candidates
  • Axira AI
    For ProfessionalsAI Candidate Screening
  • Pricing
Submit Job
foundersarehiring wordmark

Connect directly with founders who are building the future.

For Job Seekers

  • Browse Jobs
  • Weekly Job Drop
  • Career Resources
  • Why Candidates Choose Us
  • Get Axira Certified
  • Axira for Professionals
  • Compensation Calculator

For Founders

  • Post a Job
  • Pricing
  • Hiring Resources
  • Why Founders Choose Us
  • Screen Candidates with AI
  • Salary & Equity Trade-Offs

Company

  • About Us
  • Frequently asked questions
  • Contact Us
  • Articles

Join a high-growth startup or land remote work in tech, marketing, or product with FoundersAreHiring (FAH). We connect top talent directly with founders in AI, SaaS, fintech, edtech, and healthtech. All jobs are vetted, equity is transparent, and weekly curated drops cut the noise. Axira AI screening lets you prove skills and culture fit fast-private, recruiter-free, and with a shareable certificate.

© 2026 FoundersAreHiring. All rights reserved.

Build v0.16.14

Axira AI ™ is a trademark. Used under license by FoundersAreHiring.

Legal & PoliciesPrivacy PolicyTerms of ServiceCookie PolicyTakedown PolicyGuidelines

Founding Engineer

San Francisco,...
M

Multifactor

Startup
Category
Technical
Experience
4-7 years
Type
Full-Time
Location
San Francisco, CA, US
Salary
$145,000 - $195,000
Job Description
Benefits & Culture
Unlimited PTO
Health Insurance
Vision Insurance
Dental Insurance
401k Matching
Core Values
Mission Alignment
First Principles Thinking
Customer Obsession
Learning Agility
This goes straight to the founder
Share on: TwitterFacebookLinkedInHacker NewsReddit

No recruiters. Founders reply directly.

Founder Signals
Response Rate
85%
Avg Response Time
2 hours
Compensation Calculator
In startups, higher salary usually means lower equity.
Salary (affects equity %)
Link salary ↔ equity
$125,000
$145,000$195,000
Equity % (auto from trade-off model)
1.19%
0%5%
Projected Exit Value
$350,000,000
$10M$500M
Live Trade-off
Salary
Equity %
Est. Equity Value at Exit
$100,000
1.19%
$2,082,500
$125,000
1.19%
$2,082,500
$150,000
1.12%
$1,963,500
$175,000
0.78%
$1,368,500

Advanced Salary & Equity Calculator

Similar Jobs

Founding Engineer
EffiGov
$100000 - $200000
Founding Full Stack AI Engineer
Hub.xyz
$70000 - $100000
Senior Systems Engineer Audio
9 Mothers
$150000 - $250000

Related Jobs

Machine Learning Engineer
Prosper AI
0
Machine Learning Scientist
UC San Diego
$90000 - $110000
Software Engineer Typescript Node
Reelables
$55000 - $75000
Machine Learning Scientist
Relace
$100000 - $200000
Share on: TwitterFacebookLinkedInHacker NewsReddit

The Role

We’re hiring our first Founding Engineer — someone who will work alongside the founder to build Multifactor’s platform from the ground up and shape the technical foundation of the company. This is not an “early employee” role where you slot into an existing codebase and pick up tickets. You’ll be writing core infrastructure for systems that must be correct-by-construction, making architectural decisions that the next 10+ engineers will inherit, and turning peer-reviewed cryptographic research into production software that enterprises and consumers trust with their most sensitive accounts. Few roles offer this much leverage over a product that could secure millions of accounts across the agentic web.

What You’ll Do

  1. Ship production code daily across Multifactor’s full product surface — backend services, APIs, browser extensions, and client applications.
  2. Own entire features end-to-end. Take a problem (sometimes from a research paper, sometimes from a customer call) and turn it into production software. You’ll have the autonomy to shape what gets built and how.
  3. Work directly with the founder (CEO) to translate research breakthroughs into production-grade software, making architecture, threat modeling, and product decisions together. The feedback loop is measured in hours, not sprints.
  4. Build the security layer for the agentic web. Design and implement systems that prevent prompt injection, credential theft, confused-deputy attacks, and cross-agent hijacking — problems most companies haven’t even started thinking about.
  5. Lay the engineering foundation. Your code, your tooling choices, your patterns for CI/CD, testing, and incident response will shape how this team operates for years. That’s a rare opportunity to define an engineering culture from scratch around a mission that matters.

Who You Are

  1. 4–8 years of software engineering experience, with production systems that people depend on.
  2. A hands-on builder first. You write and ship features yourself. You’ll spend most of your time in the codebase, delivering production code. This role leads from the front.
  3. Strong across the stack. You’re comfortable with backend systems (APIs, services, data stores) and can build competent frontend when needed. You care about shipping the whole feature, not just your piece of it.
  4. Security-conscious by instinct. You think about threat models before feature specs. Experience with authentication protocols (OAuth, FIDO2, WebAuthn), key management, or applied cryptography is a strong signal.
  5. Comfortable with ambiguity. Seed-stage means the roadmap changes. You can hold multiple priorities, make tradeoffs with incomplete information, and still ship.
  6. Fast and rigorous. You write code quickly without cutting corners on correctness. When your platform secures people’s bank accounts and enterprise systems, precision isn’t optional — it’s the mission.
  7. A clear communicator. You can explain a technical decision to a non-technical person and review a cryptographic protocol with a PhD. Both happen here.

Nice to Have

  • Experience building browser extensions, secure enclaves, or isolated execution environments.
  • Familiarity with cryptographic libraries or protocols (TLS, post-quantum algorithms like CRYSTALS-Kyber/Dilithium, lattice-based schemes).
  • Background in ML infrastructure, particularly related to AI agent systems or anomaly detection.
  • Previous experience at a seed or Series A startup where you were one of the first 5 engineers.
  • Contributions to open-source security tools or published security research.
  • Experience building systems where correctness is non-negotiable — financial infrastructure, healthcare, defense, critical infrastructure.
  • Comfort across TypeScript/JavaScript, Python, Rust, cloud infrastructure (AWS/GCP), browser extension APIs, and relational databases.

Compensation & Benefits

  • Salary: $145,000 – $195,000
  • Equity: 0.50% – 2.00%
  • Unlimited PTO with a culture that actually encourages using it
  • Wellbeing & professional development reimbursements
  • Commuter benefits for getting to our SF office
  • Employer-sponsored retirement savings (401k w/ matching)
  • Employer-sponsored dental, vision, health, and life benefits