Founding Engineer

As a founding engineer and first full-time hire, you’ll be a cornerstone in building out the EffiGov platform and team. You’ll ship features, design scalable architectures, implement cutting edge tools and research, all in service of delivering for our early customers by any means necessary. You strike the right balance between scrappiness and elegance - we do everything manually or hardcode at least twice, only building the right processes or abstractions if there’s a third time. As the team grows, you’ll also be a mentor and a leader for new engineering hires. 

This role is based in San Francisco, CA, in person.

About the team

EffiGov is a technology company dedicated to improving the way our cities work. Our team combines expertise in AI with a long track record of civil service. We believe that the most foundational institutions in our country—local governments that provide critical services to millions of Americans every day—are severely underserved by current AI technology and distribution, and we work every day to change that. 

What you’ll do:

• Ship full-stack and AI features at a blistering pace (we use Python FastAPI and Typescript Next.js).
• Navigate extreme ambiguity and coordinate with founders, other platform engineers, and FDEs to build a cohesive roadmap.
• Lead the development of new product verticals as we expand our footprint and build towards our vision of creating the AI operating system for cities.
• Design scalable and reliable system architectures for core platform capabilities.
• Respond to system issues promptly, identify root causes, and turn lessons into a more resilient system.
• Manage and streamline cloud deployments through the refinement of our CI/CD pipeline and cloud infra.
• Talk directly to customers and unearth immediate pain points, core problems, and future opportunities, reading between the lines when necessary.
• Be receptive to brutal feedback and changes in course (even if it invalidates previous work).
• Add polish and delight when you sense a high-leverage opportunity, or just want to have fun (don’t 80/20 everything).
• Get excited about people problems - interviewing, evaluating, and mentoring new engineering hires.

What’s required:

• 3-5 years of experience as an engineer shipping full stack solutions in an elite, high velocity team
• 1+ years of experience deploying LLMs (ideally voice AI) to production for thousands of users
• Experience with some of our tech stack: Python, FastAPI, Typescript, Next JS, Docker, MongoDB, AWS (ECS Fargate), OpenAI embeddings, LiveKit, Twilio 
• A degree or significant coursework in a quantitative subject (CS, math, statistics, physics, engineering)
• Demonstrated exceptional intellect: Examples could be a 4.0 GPA from top institution, placing in Putnam Top 500, competitions like USAMO, USACO Platinum, or programs like RSI, ISEF, Regeneron STS
• Big Bonus: Experience leading projects at a top early-stage startup or founding experience
• Small Bonuses: Personal projects with real users, top hackathon wins, humanities minor or double major, published written work, policy or government experience.

Why Join:

You want to have a tangible impact on the real, built world for everyone, not just the top 1%. You want to have a massive stake in the building of an empire. You want to experience extreme highs and lows - 10x the fun, 10x the pain. You want to be surrounded by the top minds in AI + government for whom work is not a paycheck but a purpose.

Interview Process

1. Talk to Aden
2. Talk to Aubteen
3. Take-home challenge
4. Paid on-site 1-week work trial