Founding Engineer – AI Startups, Pre-seed, Seed
Airtree
full-time
Posted on:
Location Type: Hybrid
Location: Sydney • 🇦🇺 Australia
Visit company websiteJob Level
Mid-LevelSenior
About the role
- A new wave of technically ambitious AI companies
- Be employed directly by one of our portfolio companies
- Work directly with founders and operate with significant autonomy
- Have outsized ownership in businesses aiming to define new categories
- Join as an early technical leader and influence over architecture, product direction, and engineering culture
- Work on hard, unsolved problems in AI, ML, systems, and developer tooling
- Competitive early-stage equity and meaningful long-term upside
- Opportunities across infrastructure-heavy, research-driven, and product-led AI companies
Requirements
- Engineers who want **founder-level responsibility and impact**
- People comfortable with ambiguity and rapid iteration
- Builders who care about both **technical excellence and real-world outcomes**
- Candidates who are excited by early-stage risk in exchange for learning, ownership, and upside
- Who These Roles Are Not For
- Engineers looking for highly structured environments or narrow scopes
- Those seeking incremental improvements on mature systems
- People uninterested in equity-heavy compensation or early-stage dynamics
Applicant Tracking System Keywords
Tip: use these terms in your resume and cover letter to boost ATS matches.
Hard skills
AIMLsystemsdeveloper tooling
Soft skills
founder-level responsibilityimpactcomfort with ambiguityrapid iterationtechnical excellencereal-world outcomesexcitement for early-stage riskownershipupside