# Founding Member of Technical Staff

**Company:** [Ignition Benefits](https://zerogtalent.com/ai-companies/ignition-benefits)
**Location:** San Jose, CA, US
**Work mode:** On-site
**Seniority:** Senior
**Employment type:** Full Time
**Salary:** USD 180K–200K/yr
**Category:** Mechanical
**Listed:** 2026-09-19

[View and apply on Zero G Talent](https://zerogtalent.com/ai-jobs/ignition-benefits/founding-member-of-technical-staff-109941)

## What you'll do

- Build full-stack web apps for customers and ops
- Ship features end-to-end: architecture, CI/CD, monitoring
- Build and deploy AI agents with durable workflows
- Integrate third-party systems, manage edge cases
- Debug production issues, improve via code reviews

## What you need

- 5+ yrs full-stack: TypeScript, Node.js, PostgreSQL, React
- Deep experience with complex business-logic products
- Strong system design, data schema, scalability knowledge
- Spec-driven code quality, not vibe-coding
- Bonus: Python/FastAPI, LangGraph, Temporal, ReAct/RAG

## Job description

### **About Ignition**

Ignition Benefits is the AI-native employee-benefits brokerage for companies with 25–200 employees. We believe the $900B+ employer benefits market is broken: opaque, manual, and stuck in the 1990s. We are changing that with technology, transparency, and a radically better client experience. We're backed by Y Combinator and Equal Ventures, and our CEO previously built and sold Plated for $300M, the largest exit in Shark Tank history. You are joining a team that knows how to build and scale.

### **Where You'll Create Impact**

-   Build full-stack web apps our customers and our own ops team use every day
-   Ship features end to end — architecture, CI/CD, testing, monitoring, and beyond
-   Build AI agents and durable workflows that run our back office — processes that run for weeks, wait on external systems, and resume where they left off
-   Put agents in production, not in demos — human approval, evals, observability, etc
-   Integrate third-party tools and external systems, proactively managing edge cases and risk
-   Debug hard production issues and fix them for good
-   Raise the bar through code reviews and technical discussions

### **What Sets You Up for Success**

-   5+ years in full-stack engineering (TypeScript/Node.js/PostgreSQL/React and modern backend/frontend tooling and frameworks)
-   Deep experience with complex business-logic products
-   Solid understanding of system design, data schema design, and scalability
-   Strong code quality standards and attention to detail — you can write code without AI, and you use it spec-driven, not vibe-coding
-   Bonus: Python (FastAPI), LangGraph, Temporal; experience building ReAct loops, RAG

### **How You Operate**

-   Hybrid — 3 days in the office with the team, 2 remote
-   Hardcore work ethic and high agency — you deploy daily, iterate fast, and don't wait for permission
-   You own the product, not just the ticket — no PM will hand you a spec
-   Curious about new AI tooling and how to make agentic workflows reliable

### **Why You'll Thrive Here**

-   Equity ownership in a YC-backed AI company disrupting the legacy employee-benefits industry
-   Small, senior engineering team led by a CTO who scaled a startup engineering org from 2 to 50+
-   Learn the industry from a founding team with decades in employee benefits
-   Get the AI engineering experience the market values most, on real systems with real customers
-   Your feedback shapes the product directly
-   High-speed, high-trust environment with high expectations

### **Compensation**

-   **Base:** $180,000 – $200,000
-   **Equity:** 0.15% – 0.35%
-   Medical, dental and vision — we're a benefits brokerage, ours are worth having
-   401(k)

Join us: automate what's boring, solve what's hard, and build the agentic platform this industry has never had.

* * *

### Interview Process

Meet the Founding Team. Let’s vibe.

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*Source: [Zero G Talent](https://zerogtalent.com), the job board for space, defense, AI, robotics and frontier-tech companies.*