🛠️ Founding Engineer (M/F)

🚀 Context

The role of Founding Engineer is central to a startup in its launch phase (pre-seed to seed). This position is for an experienced development engineer who becomes the very first tech profile or one of the very first employees. He/she works directly with the (often non-tech) founders, co-constructing the product from the very first lines of code, while laying the technical, product and organizational foundations. It's a hybrid profile, between Tech Lead, Product Engineer, software architect, and sometimes future CTO.
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🎯 Role & Missions

• Build the product or MVP from scratch, with a high degree of technical autonomy.
• Working hand-in-hand with the founders to translate the product vision into a functional roadmap.
• Make sustainable architecture, stack and system design choices.
• Implement best practices in dev, testing, CI/CD, documentation...
• Participate in recruiting the first techs and structuring the team.
• Exchange with users to continuously improve the product.
• Endorse a "builder-ship" logic: fast shipping, iterations, product ownership.
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✅ Profile Wanted

• Senior developer (5+ years) with startup or tech product experience (scale-up, SaaS, B2B/B2C).
• Comfortable working mainly in fullstack or backend environments.
• Strong ability to work under uncertainty, to decide and iterate quickly.
• Strong product culture: UX understanding, sense of delivery, focus on user impact.
• Good communication skills (written and oral) to interact with non-tech people (founders, business people).
• Ideally: 1st experience of entrepreneurship or side project.
• Curious, independent, resourceful.
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🛠️ Technical stack (variable depending on project, frequent examples)

• Languages: TypeScript, Python, Go, Rust
• Frameworks: Next.js, React, Node.js, Django, FastAPI
• Database: PostgreSQL, Redis, MongoDB
• Infra: AWS, GCP, Docker, Vercel, Railway, Terraform
• Tooling: GitHub, Notion, Linear, Slack, CI/CD, unit tests & e2e
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🌱 Why this position

• You're building the core of the product: almost nothing exists yet.
• You have a decisive impact on the company's success.
• You could become CTO, Lead or Head of Engineering in the medium term.
• You work in areal-life entrepreneurial environment, in direct contact with the market.
• You getequity that can be worth a lot if the startup takes off.
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🧪 Recruitment process (type)

1. Call founder (vision & role alignment)
2. Technical interview (peer programming or project review)
3. Product discussion / roadmap
4. Proposal with equity + post-recruitment roadmap
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👉 Want to build a product from scratch with a real co-builder role?

Contact me to be introduced to ambitious founders or to structure your search for your next tech-first challenge 💥

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