Clera

Founding Engineering Lead

Clera  •  New York City, NY (Onsite)  •  3 hours ago
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Job Description

About the Role

Lead hands-on engineering and applied machine learning at an early-stage B2B SaaS company. You will shape the platform architecture and technical roadmap with the founders while leading a small engineering pod.

What You'll Do

  • Build and lead a pod of engineers, supporting their growth, performance, and hiring while shipping critical work yourself.
  • Own platform architecture and make build-versus-buy and infrastructure decisions.
  • Set engineering standards, code review criteria, release practices, definitions of done, and on-call policies.
  • Lead technical design and initial implementation of new initiatives.
  • Assess applied machine learning research and determine what is suitable for production systems.
  • Partner with the CTO on product direction, model strategy, and machine learning approaches.

What We're Looking For

  • Typically 5 to 8 years of engineering experience, with exceptional candidates considered from 4 to 5 years.
  • Experience in an AI-native company, with technical leadership or ownership that helped build and support an engineering team.
  • Hands-on experience training and deploying machine learning models in commercial production products, beyond integrating language model APIs.
  • End-to-end ownership of technical architecture, infrastructure decisions, and engineering standards.
  • Recent experience personally shipping production software, plus a record of stable engineering tenure.
  • Strong applied machine learning judgment, including classical methods and current approaches to transformers and agent applications.
  • Comfort with ambiguity, inherited code, hands-on development, and AI-assisted engineering workflows.

Compensation & Benefits

Base salary: $200,000 to $400,000 annually. Visa sponsorship is not available.

Location

On-site in New York, New York.

Clera

About Clera

Clera is the intro company. We introduce people to the founders who need them, and founders to the people they’d hire.

Looking for your next role?

Stop applying. Start getting introduced. Tell Clera what you want next, and we introduce you to hiring managers at 900+ startups backed by a16z, Index, YC and more. 8 days from signup to first interview.

Hiring?

Stop sorting through applicants. Clera introduces you to people who already want the move and fit your roles. Nobody reaches your shortlist without talking to Clera first.

Based in San Francisco. Introducing people in SF, New York, London, Berlin, Munich and Stockholm.

getclera.com

Industry
IT & Software
Company Size
11-50 employees
Headquarters
San Francisco
Year Founded
2025
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