Founding Engineer

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

TL;DR: We're looking for founding engineers to help us build human-focused security tech, reinvent skill-based interviewing, and transform how the the $4T+ contingent workforce industry operates

About Ropes

Ropes is building a new way for companies to hire talent, starting with anti-fraud technology and better skill-based interviews. We help staffing and recruiting firms fight fraud, identify top talent, and confidently market that talent to Fortune 500 companies and the top employers in the world.

Company highlights:

  • Talent-dense, capable team: We're a team of 10 from Penn, Stanford, Waterloo, Retool, MongoDB, and top tech companies with seed-stage headcount and Series A-type metrics

  • Well-capitalized: $3.1M seed round led by GSV Ventures & Boxgroup with angels from OpenAI, SpaceX, Retool, etc.

  • Traction: We've flown past 7 figures in revenue, with dozens of enterprise staffing customers - including the largest staffing firm in the world

  • Market opportunity: Our customers are the premier firms of the $600B+ staffing industry. We're working to reinvent how that market operates from the ground up

What You'll Do:

  • Define the new standard of technical interviewing that retires LeetCode and transforms how companies evaluate talent

  • Use AI to detect fraud, identify patterns in candidate performance, and accelerate the hiring process

Who You Are:

  • You want to solve problems end-to-end and own what you build

  • You're proficient in modern full-stack development (React, Node.js, Python, or similar) and cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP, or Azure)

  • You're highly technical with strong coding fundamentals and a bias toward quality

  • You're comfortable in a fast-moving, high-performance startup environment

Why Ropes:

  • Early impact: Join at the exact inflection point—past product-market fit, before scaling takes over

  • Ownership: As one of the first engineering hires, you'll shape technical decisions and own critical systems

This is an on-site role in New York City - designed for builders who want to change how the world hires talent.

About this role

Summary

Build secure, AI-powered talent evaluation tools in a fast-paced startup environment.

Job title

Founding Engineer

Experience level

senior level

Industry

software

Location requirements

On-site in New York City, no remote work allowed.

Salary

Not specified

Management role

No

Skills & keywords

Required skills

ReactNode.jsPythonAWS

Preferred skills

None specified

Specializations

full-stack developmentcloud infrastructureAIsecurity
Locations

Structured locations inferred from the posting.

New York, NY, USA

On-site City