Founding Staff Engineer (L)

Location: San Francisco, CA (on-site)

Type: Full-Time / Direct Hire

About the Company

The company is building the AI back office for physical businesses, starting with restaurants. Their agents pull data from legacy systems (POS, ERP, delivery platforms), execute complex multi-step workflows, and push results back — replacing hours of manual work across finance, marketing, and operations.

Think of it as an autonomous employee that can log into the same software a human would, reconcile data across fragmented systems, make decisions, and take action.

The platform serves approximately 10,000 restaurant locations across 300+ brands, including Dave's Hot Chicken, Freddy's, and Starbird.

The company has raised a $14M Series A and is at $10M ARR growing 3x year-over-year.

Key highlights:

• $14M Series A with $10M ARR growing 3x year-over-year — real revenue, real growth, not a bet on future traction
• 10,000 restaurant locations across 300+ brands already live on the platform
• No direct competitors — the problems solved require deep domain iteration and operational insight
• First US engineering hire reporting directly to Sundar, CTO and co-founder — you will help shape the team, culture, and technical direction from day one
• Target of 10 US engineers in 3 to 6 months — you are building the team, not joining it
• Genuinely hard problems — self-healing integrations, cross-system reconciliation at thousands of locations, perpetual accounting, natural language to workflow, and agent UX across every surface

About the Role

There are currently no engineers in the US. You would be among the first.

The US team will own the most business-critical work, with same-timezone proximity to customers and the founding team.

You will report directly to Sundar (CTO and co-founder) and work across the company's hardest technical challenges — from building browser-use integrations for legacy restaurant systems with no APIs to designing agentic workflows that make real decisions at scale across thousands of locations.

Engineering Culture

The engineering culture emphasizes high ownership.

Engineers:

• Own their streams end-to-end
• Make product and technical decisions independently
• Drive work forward without waiting for a spec

The team collaborates on architecture and product direction together, but individuals run their own workstreams.

The US team typically starts around 7:30–8:00 AM PT for morning overlap with the India team. Cross-timezone handoffs do not block day-to-day work.

The Hard Problems You Will Work On

The platform is building an autonomous system that handles five foundational challenges at scale.

Self-Healing Integrations

Restaurants use 8 to 15 software tools, most of which have no APIs.

The system uses browser-use and computer-use agents to connect automatically. When a vendor changes their UI, the system detects the change and adapts without breaking.

Cross-System Reconciliation

Every dollar flows through multiple systems that disagree on the details.

The platform builds engines that resolve inconsistencies across POS systems, payment processors, banks, and ERP systems automatically across thousands of locations.

Perpetual Accounting

Moving restaurants from monthly book-closing to daily visibility requires smart accrual logic that handles edge cases around payroll, rent, inventory, and expense timing.

Natural Language to Workflow

An operator describes a business process in plain English, and the agent maps data across systems, writes the logic, and runs it on a schedule.

Agent UX Across Surfaces

A real employee is reachable via chat, email, SMS, and phone.

The goal is to build the same presence for an AI agent, with memory and context that persist across every channel.

Key Responsibilities

• Design and own backend system architecture across core agentic workflows including data ingestion, reconciliation, accounting automation, and agent UX
• Build and maintain self-healing browser-use and computer-use integrations for legacy restaurant systems without APIs
• Develop cross-system reconciliation engines that resolve inconsistencies across POS, payment processors, inventory, and ERP systems at thousands of locations
• Write clean, maintainable, production-grade code in Python and SQL with strong focus on reliability and performance at scale
• Optimize backend service performance across cloud infrastructure through monitoring, profiling, and reliability improvements
• Collaborate directly with US customers to understand technical challenges and translate them into architectural improvements and product capabilities
• Contribute to building and shaping the US engineering team culture and technical practices

Requirements

Must-Have

• 6+ years of professional experience building and owning backend or full-stack systems end-to-end
• Strong proficiency in Python and SQL
• Demonstrated experience designing scalable backend architecture
• High ownership and independent execution — ability to identify problems and drive solutions
• Experience optimizing backend service performance on cloud infrastructure at meaningful scale
• Proficiency in Python, Django, and PostgreSQL
• Experience with performance optimization on GCP and DBT
• Based in or genuinely committed to relocating to San Francisco for full-time on-site work (5 days/week)
• Strong communication skills and comfort working directly with customers and the founding team

Nice-to-Have

• Experience with dbt for data transformation and analytics workflows
• Exposure to browser-use agents, computer-use agents, or agentic AI systems
• Familiarity with LLM-integrated workflows (OpenAI, Anthropic) in production environments
• Prior experience at a high-bar, fast-growing startup (Glean, Rippling, Decagon, or equivalent)
• Strong academic or competitive programming background (ICPC, IOI, or equivalent)
• Some frontend ability in React or TypeScript

Tech Stack

Backend

• Python
• SQL
• dbt

Frontend

• React
• TypeScript

AI & Data

• LLMs (OpenAI, Anthropic)
• Browser-use agents
• Computer-use agents
• Event-driven pipelines

Benefits & Perks

• Competitive compensation and equity
• Health, vision, and dental insurance
• Company laptop