Founding AI Engineer

Founding AI Engineer (Path to CTO) About Croutch & Associates Croutch & Associates is a recruiting and talent consulting firm that partners with high-growth startups and innovative technology companies to build world-class engineering organizations. We specialize in identifying exceptional AI, machine learning, software engineering, and technical leadership talent for venture-backed companies building category-defining products. We are currently partnering with an early-stage AI startup to hire a Founding AI Engineer who will play a critical role in defining the company's technical vision and engineering culture from day one. About the Role Croutch & Associates is seeking an exceptional Founding AI Engineer to help architect and build the next generation of enterprise AI systems. This is not a traditional senior engineering position. You will establish the technical foundation of the company, make critical architectural decisions, and build scalable AI infrastructure that enables autonomous agents to solve complex business problems. You'll work directly with the founding team to transform cutting-edge AI research into production-ready software used by enterprise customers. Every deployment should improve the platform, making it more intelligent, more autonomous, and more scalable over time. This role offers a direct path toward becoming the company's Chief Technology Officer (CTO) as the engineering organization grows. What You'll Own Design and own the overall technical architecture, including AI agent orchestration, workflow automation, retrieval systems, orchestration layers, and production infrastructure. Build scalable AI platforms capable of supporting enterprise-grade autonomous agents and complex multi-step reasoning. Develop production-ready LLM applications, including retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), evaluation frameworks, monitoring systems, and human-in-the-loop workflows. Lead architecture decisions involving AI infrastructure, cloud platforms, distributed systems, APIs, vector databases, and model serving. Build reliable, scalable, and secure systems capable of supporting Fortune 1000 enterprise customers. Establish engineering best practices, coding standards, CI/CD pipelines, testing strategies, and operational excellence. Recruit, mentor, and grow a high-performing engineering organization while fostering an ownership-driven culture. Stay current on advancements in foundation models, reasoning models, AI agents, reinforcement learning, inference optimization, and emerging AI technologies. Partner closely with product, customers, and leadership to rapidly ship high-impact features and continuously improve platform capabilities. Drive technical strategy while balancing speed, scalability, reliability, and long-term product vision. What We're Looking For Required Qualifications Demonstrated record of building and shipping complex AI or distributed software systems into production. Experience developing scalable AI applications using Large Language Models (LLMs), AI agents, or machine learning infrastructure. Strong expertise in software architecture, distributed systems, APIs, cloud infrastructure, and production engineering. Deep understanding of AI system evaluation, observability, orchestration, model deployment, and production monitoring. Excellent software engineering skills with proficiency in modern programming languages such as Python, Go, C++, or TypeScript. Experience designing systems that prioritize scalability, reliability, maintainability, and rapid iteration. Strong ownership mentality with the ability to independently solve ambiguous technical challenges. Passion for startup environments with the ability to move quickly and make high-impact technical decisions. Based in or willing to relocate to the San Francisco Bay Area and work onsite five days per week. Preferred Qualifications Experience building AI agent platforms, autonomous workflows, or multi-agent systems. Background in Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), vector databases, prompt engineering, or knowledge retrieval systems. Experience with Kubernetes, Docker, distributed computing, and cloud platforms such as AWS, GCP, or Azure. Previous experience as a Founding Engineer, Staff Engineer, Principal Engineer, or CTO at a venture-backed startup. Contributions to open-source AI projects, published research, or significant technical leadership within the AI community. Experience with reinforcement learning, model optimization, inference acceleration, or large-scale ML infrastructure. Preferred Technical Skills Python Go TypeScript C++ Large Language Models (LLMs) AI Agents Multi-Agent Systems Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) LangGraph LangChain OpenAI APIs Anthropic Claude Vector Databases Pinecone Weaviate FAISS Kubernetes Docker AWS Google Cloud Platform (GCP) Microsoft Azure Distributed Systems Microservices REST APIs GraphQL PostgreSQL Redis CI/CD MLOps Prompt Engineering AI Evaluation Frameworks Why Join? Opportunity to become one of the earliest technical leaders at a high-growth AI startup. Direct influence over product architecture, engineering strategy, and long-term technical direction. Build cutting-edge AI systems solving complex enterprise challenges. Fast-moving, highly collaborative environment with significant ownership. Clear path to executive technical leadership, including future CTO opportunities. Competitive compensation, meaningful equity, and the opportunity to shape a category-defining AI company. Show more Show less