Founding Engineer
Clera • New York
Posted: August 13, 2026
Job Description
About the Role
We're building an AI system that makes hardware engineering move at the speed of software. As our Founding Engineer, you'll own the entire technical execution — from architecture to production — partnering directly with the Co-Founder and CTO to turn vision into reality inside live customer programs. You will set the engineering bar for every hire who follows you, and your work will directly determine how defense and medical device companies ship products faster.
This is a full-time, in-person role based in New York City. Some travel to customer operating companies is expected and required. Visa sponsorship is not available.
What You'll Do
Design and build the core engineering system and architecture that integrates AI agents with CAD, CAE, and PLM tools — along with decades of customer technical history — while meeting the strict security requirements of defense and medical device programs.
Own end-to-end engineering execution: architecture decisions, production delivery, reliability, observability, evaluation suites, regression testing, and on-call operations.
Ship your first production AI workflow into a live customer program — one that an engineer uses weekly and depends on daily.
Build evaluation and training loops that improve the system from simulation runs, test data, engineer corrections, and field outcomes, including reinforcement learning grounded in real physics.
Sit alongside engineers at customer sites, understand where the system fails against real deadlines, and translate those learnings into platform capabilities for the next program.
Contribute directly to roadmap decisions and turn them into reliable, measurable production outcomes.
Expand the platform across multiple operating companies with measurable cycle-time reduction on at least one product line, and help build and mentor the small engineering team around you.
What We're Looking For
Must-haves (dealbreakers):
4+ years shipping software to production, including systems that real customers depended on daily.
Demonstrated experience shipping LLM agent workflows in production — workflows that call real tools, handle failures gracefully, and are held to rigorous evaluation suites.
Strong Python and backend or ML systems engineering skills for production AI systems.
Required:
Production delivery experience: observability, evaluation suites, regression testing, and on-call operations.
System architecture design for agent orchestration and tool integration.
Experience building feedback loops and evaluation systems for AI model improvement.
Track record of deploying AI systems into customer environments and iterating based on real-world failure modes.
Nice to have:
Familiarity with CAD, CAE, EDA, PLM tools, or similar domain-specific engineering software.
Background in frontier AI, applied AI, physical-world AI, or industrial software.
Experience with reinforcement learning or fine-tuning in production systems.
Prior work in simulation, robotics, autonomous systems, or physical-world AI applications.
Early-stage startup or technical founder experience.
Who thrives here:
Low ego, high standards — you can earn trust on a shop floor and learn domain expertise from 30-year mechanical engineers.
Comfortable with travel to customer operating companies.
Able to design rigorous evaluations and make honest calls between retrieval, fine-tuning, RL, or plain software.
Strong communicator with both engineers and customers.
Location & Work Arrangement
This role is on-site in New York City. Regular travel to customer sites is part of the job. Visa sponsorship is not available for this position.
Compensation & Benefits
Compensation details will be discussed during the interview process. As a founding team member, meaningful equity and competitive compensation are part of the package.
Additional Content
About the Role
We're building an AI system that makes hardware engineering move at the speed of software. As our Founding Engineer, you'll own the entire technical execution — from architecture to production — partnering directly with the Co-Founder and CTO to turn vision into reality inside live customer programs. You will set the engineering bar for every hire who follows you, and your work will directly determine how defense and medical device companies ship products faster.
This is a full-time, in-person role based in New York City. Some travel to customer operating companies is expected and required. Visa sponsorship is not available.
What You'll Do
Design and build the core engineering system and architecture that integrates AI agents with CAD, CAE, and PLM tools — along with decades of customer technical history — while meeting the strict security requirements of defense and medical device programs.
Own end-to-end engineering execution: architecture decisions, production delivery, reliability, observability, evaluation suites, regression testing, and on-call operations.
Ship your first production AI workflow into a live customer program — one that an engineer uses weekly and depends on daily.
Build evaluation and training loops that improve the system from simulation runs, test data, engineer corrections, and field outcomes, including reinforcement learning grounded in real physics.
Sit alongside engineers at customer sites, understand where the system fails against real deadlines, and translate those learnings into platform capabilities for the next program.
Contribute directly to roadmap decisions and turn them into reliable, measurable production outcomes.
Expand the platform across multiple operating companies with measurable cycle-time reduction on at least one product line, and help build and mentor the small engineering team around you.
What We're Looking For
Must-haves (dealbreakers):
4+ years shipping software to production, including systems that real customers depended on daily.
Demonstrated experience shipping LLM agent workflows in production — workflows that call real tools, handle failures gracefully, and are held to rigorous evaluation suites.
Strong Python and backend or ML systems engineering skills for production AI systems.
Required:
Production delivery experience: observability, evaluation suites, regression testing, and on-call operations.
System architecture design for agent orchestration and tool integration.
Experience building feedback loops and evaluation systems for AI model improvement.
Track record of deploying AI systems into customer environments and iterating based on real-world failure modes.
Nice to have:
Familiarity with CAD, CAE, EDA, PLM tools, or similar domain-specific engineering software.
Background in frontier AI, applied AI, physical-world AI, or industrial software.
Experience with reinforcement learning or fine-tuning in production systems.
Prior work in simulation, robotics, autonomous systems, or physical-world AI applications.
Early-stage startup or technical founder experience.
Who thrives here:
Low ego, high standards — you can earn trust on a shop floor and learn domain expertise from 30-year mechanical engineers.
Comfortable with travel to customer operating companies.
Able to design rigorous evaluations and make honest calls between retrieval, fine-tuning, RL, or plain software.
Strong communicator with both engineers and customers.
Location & Work Arrangement
This role is on-site in New York City. Regular travel to customer sites is part of the job. Visa sponsorship is not available for this position.
Compensation & Benefits
Compensation details will be discussed during the interview process. As a founding team member, meaningful equity and competitive compensation are part of the package.