Founding Engineer (Employee #1) — Full-Stack / Product
Company: Poera (by Kento Labs Inc.)
Location: San Francisco, CA — Remote/Hybrid
Job type: Full-time
Stage: Pre-Seed (backed by a top-tier VC)
About Poera.ai
Poera.ai is building an all-in-one AI creation platform that empowers creators, marketers, artists, and filmmakers to turn imagination into visual reality. We're building the ultimate multimodal engine for creative workflows — a single platform where users can generate cinematic images, video, audio, 3D assets, and real-time interactive video.
Our founder is the former multimodal tech lead for Google Gemini and holds a patent in RAG technology. We're at the Pre-Seed stage: well-funded, extremely lean, and moving dangerously fast.
The Role
We're looking for our first Founding Engineer (full-stack / product-oriented). You'll work shoulder-to-shoulder with the founder to take our flagship product from 0 to 1.
This is a high-velocity, high-output startup environment. You'll have enormous autonomy, own core architecture decisions, and take full control of the product's technical direction. We're looking for a Strong Builder — someone who thrives in ambiguity and is hungry to build a category-defining AI company from scratch.
What You Will Do
- Lead 0-to-1 development: Partner closely with the founder to architect, build, and ship the core foundations of the Poera.ai platform from the ground up.
- Own the infrastructure: Design and scale our AI infrastructure, managing complex agentic workflows and large-scale model inference.
- Ship at extreme speed: Iterate at startup pace, integrating real-time video, 3D asset generation, and LLM capabilities based on user feedback.
- Optimize model inference and serving: Design and fine-tune high-throughput, low-latency model serving systems (quantization, caching, LoRA fine-tuning, and more).
- Shape the engineering culture: Establish the code standards, best practices, and technical foundation for the future engineering team.
What We're Looking For
- Experience: 3+ years of software engineering experience (or equivalent startup / indie-building experience).
- Technical stack: Strong command of cloud-native platforms (GCP), Next.js, and Postgres/SQL; highly fluent with AI coding assistants (Claude / Cursor / Codex); familiar with MCP (Model Context Protocol) and mainstream AI/ML infrastructure.
- Delivery track record: A history of independently shipping end-to-end products, complex features, or substantial side projects.
- Startup DNA: A pure love of building, an ability to thrive in uncertainty, and a desire for high-autonomy work.
- Systems thinking: You think in terms of whole-system architecture rather than isolated microservices, and you're comfortable designing for concurrency, high availability, and scale.
Bonus Points
- Strong product taste and user empathy, with experience in creative tools (e.g., Adobe Premiere Pro or node-based workflows).
- Experience deploying open-source video models (Wan 2.7, Vidu, Kling, Hailuo) or training custom foundation models.
- Familiarity with node-based AI systems such as ComfyUI or SwarmUI.
- Contributions to ML systems tooling (compilers, kernels, inference runtimes) or open-source infrastructure projects.
What We Offer
As Founding Engineer #1, you'll have the opportunity to shape our product from the ground up. We offer a competitive startup base salary plus significant foundational equity. You'll have unparalleled ownership over the project, a direct and lasting impact on the company's future, and the chance to build tools that redefine how the world creates content.
How to Apply
If this excites you, send us your resume along with:
- Your GitHub profile or portfolio.
- Examples of distributed systems or infrastructure you've led or helped build.
- Any projects related to AI orchestration, agents, or platform systems.
Apply by email: [email protected]
Skills Required
- 3+ years of software engineering experience or equivalent startup/indie-building experience
- Strong command of cloud-native platforms (GCP)
- Experience with Next.js
- Experience with Postgres/SQL
- Fluency with AI coding assistants (Claude, Cursor, Codex)
- Familiarity with MCP (Model Context Protocol) and mainstream AI/ML infrastructure
- Proven track record shipping end-to-end products or substantial features
- Systems thinking: design for concurrency, high availability, and scale
- Startup mindset, high-autonomy and ability to thrive in ambiguity
- Strong product taste and user empathy; experience with creative tools (e.g., Adobe Premiere Pro or node-based workflows)
- Experience deploying open-source video models (Wan 2.7, Vidu, Kling, Hailuo) or training custom foundation models
- Familiarity with node-based AI systems such as ComfyUI or SwarmUI
- Contributions to ML systems tooling or open-source infrastructure projects
Poera Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Poera and has not been reviewed or approved by Poera.
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Flexible Benefits — Benefits are often described as negotiable and evolving at early‑stage startups, with explicit prompts to request a written one‑pager covering health, leave, equity, and flexibility. This context indicates potential tailoring even though a public benefits page is not available for this employer.
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Equity Value & Accessibility — Equity is positioned as a core component of total compensation in similar early‑stage AI companies, with attention to grant size, vesting, refresh cadence, and dilution mechanics. Candidates are urged to confirm these elements directly, suggesting participation in equity is expected even if exact terms are not posted.
Poera Insights
What We Do
Kento Labs is an applied research lab on a mission to bridge the gap between imagination and visual reality at scale. Our flagship product, Poera.ai, is an all-in-one AI creation platform that empowers creators, marketers, artists, and filmmakers to bring their boldest concepts to life. We are building the ultimate multimodal engine for creative workflows—a unified ecosystem where users can generate cinematic images, audio, 3D assets, and real-time interactive video in seconds. Come help us shape the future of storytelling.
Why Work With Us
Founded by former Gemini Multimodal lead who holds a patent in RAG technology, we're a lean, talent-dense team, well-funded by tier-1 investor that moves dangerously fast. Join us if you thrive on 0->1 product building, crave extreme ownership over the product, and want to ship category-defining AI without the bureaucratic drag.
