Founding Engineer

What we're building

Cascade (a16z Speedrun) is an AI orchestration layer for how the physical world gets built.

Our clients are the architects, engineers, and builders behind LaGuardia, JFK, Penn Station, nuclear reactors, data centers, and Ritz-Carltons and Four Seasons around the world. We help them find and win their next multi-million dollar project.

We’re looking for a Founding Engineer who will:

• Ship end-to-end products.

• Own features from idea to production.

• Sit next to the founders and shape the product, the tech, and the culture.

• Talk to clients who built the skyline you grew up looking at.

• Move fast. Break things. Fix them. Ship again. Broken software used by a million people beats perfect software used by no one.

Minimum requirements:

• You've played with LLMs and you're genuinely excited about what AI can do.

• You want to own the full stack, including the customer call.

• You ask a lot of questions.

• You're in New York (or want to be). We work in person.

• You have the right to work in the US (we can't sponsor visas right now)

Bonus points if

• You've built something in the physical world or vertical AI (construction, civil engineering, manufacturing, energy, logistics) - or love the space

• You've worked at an early-stage startup and know what chaos feels like.

• You've started your own company, even if it didn't work.

• You spend weekends at hackathons or shipping side projects no one asked for.

• You have a trail of cool stuff you built just because you wanted it to exist.

Benefits

• 130k-200k salary depending on experience

• Founding engineer level equity

• Free food in the office

• Health insurance