Staff Engineer (Founding)

ABOUT THE ROLE:

The Founding Engineer at Varick owns the technical direction of the entire platform. You design the architecture, set the engineering standards, and make the build-vs-buy decisions that determine whether this company becomes a generational platform or stays a services business. This is not a senior IC seat inside someone else's org — you are the person defining the system.
We're building a platform that turns operational audit artifacts into autonomous agent orchestration. Every client deployment compounds the product. You lead the technical work that makes that compounding real — from the agent framework and orchestration layer to the infrastructure that scales us from 1:1 to 1:many. This role has a direct path to CTO.

WHAT YOU'LL DO:

• Own the Technical Architecture Design and build the core platform: agent orchestration, process mining infrastructure, diagnostic pipelines, and the control plane that turns audit outputs into deployed AI systems. You make the build-vs-buy decisions, own the system design, and set the technical bar.
• Build Production AI Systems at Scale Architect compound AI systems — multi-step agents, retrieval pipelines, evaluation frameworks, human-in-the-loop governance — that run reliably inside Fortune 5000 environments. These systems handle real operational workflows with real consequences.
• Ship Fast, Iterate Faster You set the pace. We ship to production weekly, not quarterly. You drive engineering velocity, cut scope ruthlessly, and keep the team focused on what matters. Analysis paralysis kills startups — you don't let it happen.
• Build the Engineering Organization Recruit, mentor, and lead engineers. Set code review standards, establish engineering processes, and build a team that can scale from 5 to 50. You hire people who are better than you at specific things and give them room to operate.
• Bridge Research and Production Stay current on the frontier — foundation models, agent frameworks, inference optimization, tool use, long-context reasoning — and translate what's useful into production systems. You know the difference between a research demo and something that works at enterprise scale.

WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR:

• 6+ years of software engineering experience, with at least 2 years in a staff, principal, or founding engineer role
• Deep experience building and deploying AI/ML systems in production — not just fine-tuning notebooks, but the full stack: inference, orchestration, evaluation, monitoring
• You have built and shipped systems at a top AI lab (Google DeepMind, OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, Meta FAIR) or as a founding/senior engineer at a high-growth AI startup
• Strong systems design instincts — you can architect for reliability, scale, and iteration speed simultaneously
• Ownership mentality — you take responsibility for the outcome, not just your code
• You recruit well and people want to work with you
• High agency — you don't wait for requirements documents or permission

HELPFUL EXPERIENCE:

• Experience building agent systems, compound AI workflows, or LLM-powered applications in production
• Background in process mining, workflow automation, or enterprise integration
• Infrastructure depth (Kubernetes, distributed systems, cloud architecture)
• Previous founding engineer or CTO experience at a venture-backed startup
• Experience operating in enterprise environments with real security, compliance, and reliability requirements
• Published research or significant open-source contributions in AI/ML

WHY VARICK:

• Build the platform, not a feature. You own the entire technical vision. This is founding-team scope, not a staff IC seat inside a 200-person eng org.
• Production, not papers. Every system you build runs inside real enterprise operations. 100% deployment rate. Your work has immediate, measurable impact.
• Early enough to be a co-builder. Your technical decisions shape the company. The architecture you build is the product we sell.
• Compounding leverage. Every client deployment feeds the pattern library and makes the platform smarter. You're building a system that gets better with every customer, not doing the same integration twice.
• Work with decision-makers. You talk directly to CFOs, COOs, and ops leads at Fortune 5000 companies — not product managers relaying requirements through six layers.

*We are an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or protected veteran status. Employment is subject to a standard confidentiality and non-disclosure agreement.