Founding Engineer
About This Role
Calaris is tackling one of the hardest domains in HR-tech: making human Capability visible, measurable, and actionable. Our AI-powered dialogue platform — Calaris Assess — conducts structured interviews that surface problem-solving ability, leadership, and coachability that traditional credentials alone may not fully capture.
We are building multiple products simultaneously: an AI assessment system, a Capability-driven matching platform, and enterprise analytics tools. As a founding engineer, you will take end-to-end ownership of one of these products — leading its architecture, implementation, and technical direction. Product direction is shaped together with the CEO and business team, with engineering as an equal partner in the conversation.
Calaris's engineering team is intentionally kept small — a highly selective team where every engineer is expected to handle the full path from understanding the business problem, to designing the solution, to shipping the implementation. There is no room for handoffs between specialists.
AI is what makes this possible. Calaris is AI-native across the company: AI coding agents and spec-driven development sit at the core of our engineering workflow, and AI is also embedded in how we run project management and other internal operations. We are looking for engineers who view AI as a force multiplier — people who use AI to compress the path from business problem to shipped product, and who see this lean, AI-augmented model as the natural shape of engineering in this era.
This role is broadly framed, and a generalist full-stack background is a strong fit. We equally welcome engineers with deep expertise in any of the following areas, and the appetite to build across the product as part of the founding team: - AI/ML engineering — improving model accuracy and building evaluation infrastructure for our AI dialogue assessment - Research — advancing the accuracy of AI-driven assessment, or R&D in adjacent areas such as Physical AI - Avatar engineering — improving the avatar systems behind our AI interviews
Responsibilities
- Lead architecture design and technology decisions for your product area
- Drive design, implementation, release, and ongoing operation of major features
- Set and raise the engineering bar — code quality, testing, observability, security
- Build and improve our AI-augmented development foundation — spec-driven development, agent workflows, and internal tooling
- Shape product direction and requirements together with the CEO and business team
Expected Outcomes
Lead the development of major features from design through release, in close discussion with the CEO. In parallel, drive architecture improvements and raise the team's engineering baseline.
Take independent ownership of your product area, and lead 0→1 development of new products or domains. Generate impact that extends beyond your individual product.
Requirements
- Experience building large-scale or complex business logic web applications with a modern stack (e.g., React/TypeScript on the frontend with a typed API and managed Postgres / cloud-native backend)
- Experience leading product or service development from architecture decisions through production operation, including the design of quality standards and non-functional requirements
- Demonstrated ability to translate business intent into technical decisions and ship the result independently
- Experience actively adopting AI/spec-driven development practices and improving how you or your team works as a result
Nice to Have
- Experience founding or launching a new product/business from scratch
- Experience as an early engineer at a startup (especially Seed / Series A stage)
- Experience developing and operating enterprise-grade products
- Technical leadership experience — Tech Lead, Staff Engineer, Principal Engineer, or equivalent technical leadership roles
- Security expertise in web applications and generative AI
Who You Are
- Keeps asking "why?" — thinks critically and constructively about what we build and how
- Cares about the impact the product has on people and organizations, not just the code
- Sees the path from business problem to shipped feature as a single workflow they own — not a chain of handoffs
- Treats AI as a collaborator — actively explores what AI-augmented development can unlock
- Thrives with high autonomy in a small, focused team
- Thrives in the diverse, fast-changing situations a startup faces — turns ambiguity into momentum
Examples of our tech stack: Language — TypeScript, Python Frontend — React, TanStack Start, Tailwind CSS Backend — Supabase, Drizzle ORM, Better-Auth Infra — AWS, Vercel (Terraform) AI — OpenAI models, Anthropic Claude, Deepgram, etc. CI/CD — GitHub (Enterprise) Tools — Claude Code, Codex, Slack, Notion, Datadog, Playwright, Vitest, etc. If you want to take real ownership of a product that changes how the world sees human potential, as part of the founding team, let's talk. Casual chat — no preparation needed. Note: This role is primarily for full-time hires, but contract-based engagement is also welcome for those with deep expertise who cannot commit full-time right now.
Lead the technical direction and end-to-end development of one of Calaris's products as part of the founding engineering team. Build the product, and shape what we build.
We see people for their Caliber — not their credentials. That's our conviction. We're looking for people to build the world of "From Credentials to Caliber" alongside us, whatever the role. Let's start a conversation.
Book a Casual Chat