Founding Principal Architect (Full Stack / Infrastructure)

Founding Principal Architect (Full Stack / Infrastructure) Compensation: $0–$250K base + competitive equity Location: New York City (Brooklyn; in-office / hybrid) Work Policy: NYC-based preferred; travel to NYC required if not local (first 6 months ramp) Relocation: Up to $10K assistance available Stage: Seed-stage legal AI startup | $10M funding | Founded 2025

Who Are We? We’re a Sequoia-backed legal AI startup building the operating system for in-house legal teams. Legal work today is slowed by fragmented context, buried knowledge, and repetitive manual workflows. We’re building an AI-powered intake and automation platform that captures institutional knowledge and turns it into structured, searchable, actionable systems.

Founded by engineers with legal backgrounds, we already have design partners and paying customers, with a public launch planned for Fall 2025. We’re early, fast-moving, and deeply opinionated about building lawyer-led legal tech the right way.

This hire will be one of the first non-cofounder engineers—and will shape the company’s technical DNA.

What’s in It for You? You’ll architect the core systems that power the company from the ground up.

You’ll work directly with founders on product strategy, infrastructure decisions, and long-term technical vision.

You’ll build and scale production systems from early traction to enterprise-grade robustness.

You’ll recruit and mentor engineers as the team grows—with a clear path toward CTO or Head of Engineering.

You’ll receive meaningful equity and real influence over the trajectory of the company.

What Will You Do? Own system design and implementation across backend, infrastructure, and full-stack feature delivery.

Lead architecture decisions around scalability, performance, reliability, and security—primarily leveraging GCP.

Design and build complex React + Node.js systems that power customer-facing applications.

Establish engineering best practices: CI/CD, testing, security standards, monitoring, and operational processes.

Collaborate with founders and legal domain experts to scope high-impact features end-to-end.

Recruit, onboard, and mentor junior and mid-level engineers.

Drive technical culture—high ownership, fast iteration, thoughtful debate, and strong execution.

What Will You Need? 5–10 years of professional software engineering experience, including leading end-to-end projects and/or managing developers.

Deep expertise with React, Node.js, JavaScript/TypeScript.

Strong backend and infrastructure orientation (frontend-only candidates will not be a fit).

Deep experience designing and scaling complex production systems, ideally on GCP.

DevOps exposure and comfort owning infrastructure decisions.

Proven experience building and scaling customer-facing web applications.

Founder or founding-team experience strongly preferred.

Experience at FAANG, top-tier technology companies, or high-growth VC-backed startups (Series A–C).

Strong ownership mindset—comfortable operating in ambiguity and high-stakes startup environments.

Excellent communication skills and ability to translate between technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Strongly Preferred Early-stage startup experience with real production customers.

Prior work in legal tech or other regulated industries.

Experience with enterprise security and compliance (OAuth, SOC 2, GDPR).

Ability to bring personality and strong cultural energy to a small, high-intensity team.

We are looking for someone who wants to build—not maintain. Someone who enjoys architecting from first principles, shipping fast, and scaling responsibly. This is a hands-on leadership role with real authority, real equity, and real impact from day one.