Founding Engineer

Open Posted on May 13, 2026

At a glance

Pay
$25k – $35k/yr
Type
Full Time
Location
RemoteIN
Posted
May 13, 2026
Company size
Startup (1-50)
Industry
Technology/Software

About the role

  • We’re looking for a Founding Engineer to help build the core systems that power Questom.
  • This is not a framework-specialist role. It’s not about perfect abstractions on day one. It is about systems thinking, ownership, and the ability to stitch together complex infrastructure into something that works — fast.
  • You’ll be one of a very small group shaping not just the product, but how the company builds.

What You’ll Do

Build systems that connect everything

Design and build high-performance systems that connect

  • Communication platforms (voice, SMS, email, chat)
  • Agentic workflows
  • External tools like CRMs and internal APIs
  • Stitch together APIs, workflows, and agents into cohesive systems that actually run in production
  • Think deeply about how these systems scale across many customers with different data sources and configurations
  • Build agentic workflows

Create workflows where agents

  • Handle live conversations
  • Pull context from systems like Salesforce
  • Log outcomes in tools like HubSpot
  • Take real actions on behalf of users
  • Focus on giving agents the right information at the right time and designing systems that make this repeatable across customers
  • Turn ambiguity into working software
  • Start from half-baked ideas, rough customer conversations, or incomplete requirements
  • Ship a 90% working solution quickly
  • Iterate toward something more general, scalable, and high quality
  • Own what you build
  • Take end-to-end ownership: design → build → ship → improve
  • Break things thoughtfully — and fix them yourself
  • Make judgment calls without needing constant guidance

What Success Looks Like

  • In the first 30 days
  • Sit in a few customer conversations
  • Identify a real pain point
  • Propose a product or feature to solve it
  • Build and ship an end-to-end solution that delivers real value
  • In the first 90 days
  • Take learnings from multiple customer builds
  • Start shaping more general-purpose systems
  • Help lay the foundation for a platform that can scale to many customers — and eventually very large companies

How We Build

  • We use modern tools aggressively and expect you to learn quickly:
  • Agentic workflow frameworks
  • Communication infrastructure
  • AI agent SDKs
  • We rely heavily on coding agents and automation — curiosity and systems understanding matter more than syntax mastery
  • We build fast, then make it better
  • We’re opinionated, iterative, and comfortable changing direction when a simpler solution delivers customer value

What Matters (and What Doesn’t)

What matters a lot

Systems thinking

Ownership

  • Comfort with ambiguity
  • Curiosity and fast learning
  • Product taste (what’s worth building vs not)
  • Respect for how other people think

What doesn’t matter much

  • Deep expertise in any single framework or language
  • Pixel-perfect UI work
  • Writing perfect SQL by hand
  • Knowing our exact stack on day one
  • If you understand how modern web systems, APIs, workflows, and agents fit together — and you’re excited to learn the rest — you’re in great shape.

How We Work

  • Fast, opinionated, iterative
  • Disagreements are encouraged and happen openly
  • We build first, think later — but we do think

You won’t be micromanaged

You will be trusted with real responsibility early

Who You Are

You likely describe yourself as

  • Extremely curious
  • Highly independent
  • Comfortable operating without a map
  • Someone who enjoys connecting dots across systems
  • High-EQ and collaborative
  • You want to be deeply involved — not just shipping tickets, but helping build a company.

Who Should Not Apply

  • If you need clear specs and guardrails to do your best work
  • If you prefer working in isolation
  • If you’re uncomfortable with constant ambiguity
  • If you don’t enjoy discussing ideas, systems, and tradeoffs with a small team
  • If you want a narrow role instead of broad ownership
  • If reading this makes you feel slightly intimidated but very excited, that’s intentional — and probably a good sign.

About Trelium

Trelium
Technology/Software · Startup (1-50)
YC Backed

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