Founding Engineer
Quick facts
- Pay
- $180,000 to $250,000 base salary
- Type
- Full-time
- Location
- New York City, New York
- Skills
- Python, TypeScript, React, Node.js
- Industry
- Information Technology — 671 open jobs
- Visa in listing
- H-1B, OPT
- Apply
- Free to apply — never pay anyone for a job offer or visa sponsorship
Job description
Our client is a fast-growing AI startup building multimodal sales and lifecycle agents for youth enrichment businesses and families. Its voice, SMS, and email agents help sports programs, academic centers, camps, and other providers answer families instantly, drive enrollment, and grow long-term relationships. The seven-person company was founded by former Uber and DoorDash engineering leaders, has raised $3M, and reached seven figures of ARR in its first 4.5 months.
This is a true founding engineering seat on a small, high-velocity team, with two hires planned. You will own one of the company's core product domains end to end, make product decisions directly with founders and customers, and ship production features without a separate PM layer.
What you'll do:
- Own the B2B operating system, multimodal agent layer, family graph and memory system, or a new consumer product.
- Join customer calls, synthesize feedback, make roadmap tradeoffs, and ship without waiting for a PM.
- Build reliable voice, SMS, and email agents with low latency, strong response quality, and long-running state across channels.
- Establish evaluation, prompt-versioning, guardrail, and drift-detection systems for nondeterministic AI behavior.
- Work full stack across React and Next.js frontends, Node.js services, and Python voice pipelines.
- Ship production improvements daily while raising the bar for architecture, product quality, and engineering velocity.
Requirements
What we're looking for:
- 3 to 8 years of full-stack product engineering experience.
- Strong production experience with TypeScript, Node.js, React, and Next.js.
- Evidence of shipping a zero-to-one product at a high-growth startup, as a founder, or on a new-product team inside a larger technology company.
- Depth in production voice or messaging agents, long-running agent state and memory, B2B2C or marketplace products, or agent evaluations and guardrails.
- Direct experience building products with LLM APIs or agent SDKs such as Anthropic, OpenAI, Vercel AI SDK, or Mastra.
- Strong product judgment, high agency, comfort talking with customers, and the ability to make good decisions without extensive structure.
- Willingness to work five days per week from the Chelsea, New York City office. Candidates outside New York must be willing to relocate. Existing OPT or H-1B transfers may be considered.
Benefits
Compensation and benefits:
- $180,000 to $250,000 base salary.
- Competitive founding-stage equity.
- Direct product ownership and daily access to the founders and customers.
- Career flexibility to grow into leadership or remain on a senior individual-contributor track.
- Full-time, in-person role in Chelsea, New York City.
Visa sponsorship record
No public sponsorship records foundWe didn't find H-1B, H-1B1, E-3 or green card (PERM) filings under the name Raydar in the Department of Labor and USCIS data. That doesn't mean the job can't be sponsored — the company may file under a different legal name, be new to sponsorship, or sponsor a visa that isn't in these datasets (for example H-2B or J-1).
Tip: ask the recruiter early, in writing, which visa they sponsor and whether they cover the legal and filing fees.
Which visas can work for this job
Occupation: Software Developers (SOC 15-1252).
- Mentioned in the listing
H-1B, OPT
- H-1B cap-exempt employer
Regular cap-subject employer — a new H-1B needs to win the lottery in March (unless you already hold cap-counted H-1B status).
- TN (citizens of Canada and Mexico)
This kind of role may fit the USMCA profession “Computer Systems Analyst (or Engineer, for engineering-degree holders)” — it depends on the actual duties. No lottery, no cap; you need the matching degree or license.
- E-3 (Australia) and H-1B1 (Chile, Singapore)
Same degree requirement as H-1B, but no lottery and a separate quota that is rarely filled.
- O-1 (extraordinary ability)
For candidates with awards, publications, press, a high salary or critical roles at distinguished organizations. No cap, no lottery; the employer files a petition.
- STEM OPT extension (F-1 students)
Requires an E-Verify employer. We didn't find this company in the E-Verify list — ask HR.
Salary vs prevailing wage
Level III (experienced)Software Developers · New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ. Annual prevailing wages set by the Department of Labor (OFLC).
| Level | Prevailing wage | H-1B lottery odds* |
|---|---|---|
| Level I | $109,845 | ~15% |
| Level II | $137,717 | ~31% |
| Level III | $165,589 | ~46% |
| Level IV | $193,461 | ~61% |
This job pays $180,000–$250,000 a year — that's Level III (experienced). In the wage-weighted H-1B lottery a Level III registration gets 3 entries; estimated selection chance about 46% — better than average.
* Odds are DHS projections for the FY2027 wage-weighted lottery (actual results vary by year and employer). Since the FY2027 cap season the H-1B lottery is weighted by wage level: Level I = 1 entry, II = 2, III = 3, IV = 4. The level is set by the offered wage against the prevailing wage for the occupation and worksite. Separately, a $100,000 fee for new H-1B petitions for workers outside the US was announced in 2025; as of September 2026 a federal court ruling keeps it unenforceable while appeals continue — check the current status.
Sources: U.S. Department of Labor OFLC disclosure data (H-1B/H-1B1/E-3 LCA, PERM), OFLC prevailing wage data, USCIS H-1B Employer Data Hub, E-Verify participating employers. Data loaded: LCA FY2024–FY2026, PERM, USCIS Data Hub, OFLC wages; updated 2026-10-03. Employers are matched by name, so records of companies with similar names can occasionally be mixed up. This is general information, not legal advice — talk to an immigration attorney about your case.