Founding Engineer — Empathic

Location: San Francisco, CA (100% Onsite)
Compensation: $175,000 – $250,000 base + 1% – 6% equity
Employment Type: Full-Time

Empathic is building an AI-native iMessage companion focused on real-time human-AI interaction. The company currently has 130 paying customers, 80%+ day-one retention, and 70%+ week-two retention. Raised $2.7M led by BoxGroup at a $30M valuation. The founder is a Thiel Fellow, YC alum, and third-time founder.

This is a founding engineering seat with 1%–6% equity and full ownership across backend, ML, and frontend systems. You will be one of the first technical hires, setting engineering standards and helping recruit future engineers as the company scales.

• Optimize inference costs and model utilization
• Own and evolve the company's memory systems
• Improve latency and information compression across the stack
• Build recommendation and content delivery systems
• Design and ship real-time voice and AI interaction experiences
• Own backend infrastructure, ML integrations, and frontend systems
• Set engineering standards and help recruit future engineers

• 3+ years of professional engineering experience with at least one year of significant ownership responsibility
• Strong backend development skills — Python, Go, Rust, TypeScript, or similar
• Full-stack product development experience
• Distributed systems knowledge
• Ability to move quickly and operate independently
• Comfortable in a high-intensity in-person startup environment
• San Francisco onsite — 9-to-6 minimum

Strong signals include former founders, founding engineer experience, top-school background, AI-native builders, full-stack ownership, real-time systems experience, and voice or video infrastructure experience. Ideal roles: Founding Engineer, Startup Founder, Early Employee at Seed–Series A Startup, Full-Stack Engineer, AI Engineer, Product Engineer, Consumer AI Builder, Real-Time Systems Engineer, Voice AI Engineer, or HCI-focused engineers.

• Engineers who treat engineering as just a job
• Candidates with multiple short company hops
• Those who cannot articulate quality judgment around AI outputs
• Pure enterprise maintenance mindsets

1. Screening call with founder
2. Technical interview 1 — algorithms
3. Technical interview 2 — system design
4. Onsite with founder
5. Offer

• Role is 100% onsite in San Francisco — please only apply if you can commit to this

Shortlisted candidates will be contacted by David Joseph & Co., the recruiting partner managing this search on behalf of Empathic.