Senior Founding Engineer (AI/ML) at Clera
San Francisco, CA
$130,000–$170,000
Jul 27, 2026
San Francisco, CA
Jul 28, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A founding engineer role at an early-stage AI recruiting startup, responsible for building and owning the core intelligence layer — recommendation systems, ranking algorithms, and LLM-powered candidate-role matching. The work spans full-stack feature delivery, production data pipelines, and ML/AI services. Best suited to a generalist engineer comfortable with high autonomy, fast iteration, and a hands-on startup culture including an on-site coworking arrangement in San Francisco.
Senior level · San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley, CA · Full-time
Pay in the description: $130,000–$170,000
We read this from the posting text with AI. Skim the description below before ruling yourself out.
How this req sits in the market our data
Roughly 380 people in the San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley, CA area plausibly meet what this posting asks for (software developers). range 95–490
Applicant volume Moderate — A normal amount of company. The rare requirements below are what will separate a shortlisted application from the rest.
Rare in this occupation — lead with these, and say what you built with them.
Most people in this occupation already list these. Still required — just not what gets you shortlisted.
What the occupation pays Median $190,744 (middle half $167,095–$224,501). This posting is about at that midpoint.
Estimated from BLS employment for this occupation and area, per-skill prevalence across our listing corpus, and published wage benchmarks — as of Jul 29, 2026. It is a model, not a headcount.
Why we read it this way (5)
The role is titled 'founding engineer' with no explicit seniority level, but the scope — owning the full AI/ML stack, end-to-end feature delivery, and production pipeline design at an early-stage startup — supports a Senior classification.
The SOC classification is a judgment call: the role is primarily software development (TypeScript, React, full-stack features) but has a meaningful ML/AI component (recommendation systems, ranking algorithms, LLM matching). 15-1252 Software Developers is the primary code given the breadth of full-stack ownership; 15-2051 Data Scientists is the runner-up given the AI/ML emphasis.
All named tools (Cursor, Supabase, Prisma, Typesense, LLM APIs, trigger.dev, TypeScript, React) appear together in the 'What we're looking for' requirements section and are framed as production-grade experience, so all are treated as hard gates.
The posting mentions a 6-day-per-week schedule and on-site coworking/hackerhouse setup — unusual working conditions worth flagging for candidates.
Visa sponsorship is explicitly noted as available.
Read the full posting
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