Join Hire Hangar and work with fast-growing global companies while building a long-term career.
Job Title: Founding Software Engineer (Full-Stack)
Location | On-Site — San Francisco, CA
Time Zone | PST
Role Overview:
We are seeking a Founding Software Engineer to join one of the earliest technical teams at a fast-moving AI video infrastructure startup. The company's first product turns prompts and documents into whiteboard-style explainer videos in seconds, with a broader vision to make video generation fast, cheap, and programmable enough for AI to use video anywhere it uses text today. This is one of three founding engineering hires, and the role involves owning major parts of the core product experience across frontend, backend, user workflows, and developer-facing surfaces. The ideal candidate can take ambiguous product goals and turn them into polished, reliable software, shipping across the full stack without needing narrow boundaries or someone to hand them a spec. You will work directly with the founder, make real technical decisions, and help define how engineering works at the company from the ground up.
Key Responsibilities:
- Build and ship user-facing product features from idea to production
- Design backend APIs and product flows for accounts, projects, jobs, assets, usage, billing-related workflows, and collaboration
- Build frontend experiences that feel fast, clear, and dependable
- Improve onboarding, account management, usage visibility, and developer experience
- Work across product, design, infrastructure, and customer feedback loops
- Write maintainable code, tests, and documentation for systems other engineers can build on
Required Qualifications:
- Strong full-stack engineering experience with modern web applications
- Comfort building production systems with typed languages, frontend frameworks, -backend APIs, databases, and cloud services
- Strong product judgment and the ability to make complex workflows feel simple to users
- A bias toward shipping, with enough rigor to keep important paths reliable
- Clear communication and ownership from problem definition through launch
- Comfortable using AI tools to move faster, while using their own judgment to define the problem and drive the solution
- Must be willing to work on-site in San Francisco, CA
Preferred Qualifications:
- Direct ownership experience at an early-stage startup or founding team
- Experience making technical decisions without a formal spec or ticket queue
- Comfort working closely across product, design, and infrastructure simultaneously
Tools & Technology:
- Modern frontend frameworks
- Backend/API frameworks and databases
- Cloud infrastructure and deployment tooling
- AI-assisted development tools
We connect top talent with vetted employers, competitive pay, and real growth opportunities.