Job Description
Founding Engineer - AI Personal Intelligence App - San Francisco (In-Office)
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Location: San Francisco, California (in-office)
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Compensation: $70,000 - $120,000 base + 1.5% - 5% equity
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Our client is a pre-seed, YC-backed AI startup building a proactive personal agent for iPhone - the complement to general-purpose AI. Instead of trying to know everything about everything, it builds a model of one life in particular: your people, plans, promises and preferences. It already ships in early access, built around two core jobs - Notes, which keeps the small details that turn out to matter, and Reminders, which brings the right answer back at the exact moment it counts, unprompted. Privacy is built into the architecture: audio stays on-device, only text or selected context ever reaches a model, and users have real deletion controls.
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The team is small, sharp and already has one exit behind them before starting this company. They are now hiring their third engineer - the founding engineer - to help lay the bricks as they
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cut the path ahead.
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What you'll own:
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- The iOS product surface end to end (Swift, iOS 26, on-device foundation models), primarily front-end/product
- The two core features - Reminders and sectionalized Notes
- Independent problem-solving on real product issues - if transcript quality drops because the phone's in a pocket, you work out why and fix it without being asked
- One measurable number (the understanding engine's evaluation score) within the first 3 months
- Genuine product decisions in your area, acting as a third brain that pushes back on direction where needed
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What they're looking for:
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- Proof of finished, self-driven, shipped-and-used work - a GitHub with real projects that got real use, not tutorials or abandoned starts
- Initiative under ambiguity - you see what needs doing and do it, without waiting for a ticket or a spec
- Velocity that survives a real codebase - comfortable shipping working Swift within the first couple of weeks, with or without prior iOS experience
- At least one shipped native mobile product as evidence; iOS or on-device ML experience is a nice-to-have, not a gate
- Strong instincts using AI agents - shaping and editing what the tools produce rather than pasting output directly
- Real design and product taste is a strong plus
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This is an excellent and rare opportunity for junior engineers who have strong personal projects and want to have real ownership of an IOS app.