How to hire a founding engineer

What a founding engineer does

A founding engineer is one of the first engineers at a startup, hired before there is an engineering team to join. At seed, Carta puts the median team at four people, so this person often owns the product end to end: what gets built, how, and what breaks.^[1]

That makes the role closer to a cofounder's than to a senior engineer's at a large company. Hire for judgment and range, not for a title.

Write the role down first

Before you post anything, write one page you could hand to a candidate:

• The two or three problems this person owns in their first six months.
• Three to five must-haves you would not trade away, each one you can check in an interview.
• What you can live without, so you do not reject good people for the wrong reasons.
• The pay range in cash and in equity. In California (15 or more employees), New York State (4 or more) and Massachusetts (25 or more), among other states, employers have to put a pay range in a job posting; see the San Francisco, New York and Boston guides.

Where to find them

Start with people you or your investors already know. In Ashby's data, 40% of referred applicants reach an interview, against 3% of people who apply on their own, and 16% of referred candidates who interview get an offer, against 6% of those who applied on their own.^[2]

A job post still matters, but expect to read a lot. Ashby counts 298 inbound applications for every hire at startups with fewer than 25 people.^[3]

• Engineers who were early at a company that grew, and want to do it again.
• People who built and shipped a product of their own, even a small one.
• Senior engineers at larger companies who keep a side project going.

How to interview

1. A call about something they built: what they chose, what they would change, what broke.
2. Work on your real problem: a paid trial day or a take-home sized to a few hours, then a review of it together.
3. A design talk on your stack, at the size you will be in two years, not ten.
4. References from people who worked beside them, not only their managers.
5. A founder conversation about how you work, decide and disagree.

It takes time. Ashby puts the median time to hire for technical roles at 40 days, and engineering at 24.7 hours of interviewing per hire. Keep the steps few and close together, because a strong engineer usually has other offers.^[4]

What to pay

In Pave's January 2023 data for San Francisco, New York and Seattle, the median market offer for a senior first engineer at the pre-seed or seed stage was $187,000 in cash with 0.33% equity. Newer numbers, and how city and stage move them, are in our guide to founding engineer salary and equity.^[5]

Mistakes that cost the most

• Hiring a great big-company engineer who has never worked without a team around them.
• Leaving what they own vague, so two people end up owning the same thing, or nobody does.
• A process with six rounds over five weeks. The best candidates take another offer while you are still deciding.
• Waiting for a perfect match on every must-have. Pick the two that matter most.

How Vouch helps

Vouch finds and vets founding engineers and first go-to-market hires for seed and Series A startups. You meet a short list and pay only when you hire. We search our own pre-screened pool, your network and the open web, interview every candidate ourselves, and send you a short list with a fit score out of 5 against your must-haves, usually within a week of the intake call. Tell us about the role.

Questions founders ask