Founding Engineer

Applied Labs

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New York Until 8/21/2026 First posted March 18, 2026 Last posted March 18, 2026
Job description

About us

  • At Applied Labs, we’re building the platform for reliable AI agents that automate complex work. We are primarily an in-person company based in New York City.

Why this could be a fit

  • Trajectory: 10x growth in 4 months; strong momentum.

  • Ownership: High autonomy; own systems end‑to‑end.

  • Challenging problems: Design novel, reliable solutions for complex tasks.

  • Team quality: Early team from Harvard, MIT, Gemini, Meta.

What you’ll do

  • Own core agent systems from idea to production: orchestration, tool‑use, planning, memory, evals.

  • Architect for reliability: design agent loops and guardrails that hold up under real‑world edge cases.

  • Ship fast, learn faster: run experiments, measure outcomes, iterate weekly.

  • Collaborate tightly with the founders in NYC to set product direction, quality bars, and engineering culture.

  • Set the blueprint: your design decisions, documents, and code style become the standard for future hires.

You might thrive in this role if you:

  • Have shipped production systems end‑to‑end and love owning outcomes.

  • Care deeply about reliability, not just demos - tests, evals, and metrics matter to you.

  • Are product‑minded: you ask “what does the user need?” and then build the simplest thing that works.

  • Prefer in‑person collaboration and fast decision cycles.

  • Want to help define the engineering culture at a company that’s scaling quickly.

Our tools

  • We currently build with Python, Go, React, Clickhouse, K8s, Bazel, Postgres, GCP, Modal

  • We hire for ability, not checklists.

Compensation & benefits

  • Competitive salary + significant equity

  • Flexible (Unlimited) Paid Time Off

  • Medical, Dental, and Vision benefits for you and your family

  • Fancy lunches (think Nubiani), as well as snacks, coffee, or boba that always hits the spot

  • Relocation support to NYC if needed.

Apply

Compensation (from employer):
$160K – $300K • Offers Equity

About this role

Summary

Own and design core AI agent systems, focus on reliability, collaborate with founders, fast iteration

Job title

Founding Engineer

Experience level

not specified

Industry

software

Location requirements

In-person in New York, NYC-based, remote not mentioned

Salary

$160K – $300K • Offers Equity

Management role

No

Skills & keywords

Required skills

PythonGosystem ownershipreliability testing

Preferred skills

None specified

Specializations

system designreliabilityPythonGo
Locations

Structured locations inferred from the posting.

New York, NY, USA

On-site City