The Role
As a Founding Engineer, you will design and build systems, integrate tools, and manage data frameworks while collaborating closely with founders to enhance higher education technologies.
Summary Generated by Built In
Founding Engineer | Risely AI
What You Will Do
What We’re Looking For
What We Offer
What It Is Like to Work Here
About Risely AI
Location: Fully in-person at our Bay Area office
Apply: Email [email protected] with your resume and your proudest project (a short description or link)
(Note: Visa sponsorship is not available for this role.)
This isn’t a normal engineering job. As a Founding Engineer, you will work side by side with the founders to shape the architecture, ship product, and get it running in production at universities. You will:
- Build the Agent Framework: design how agents plan, use tools via MCP, manage memory, and execute safely.
- Integrate at Scale: build integrations for complex university systems and productivity tools, tame messy schemas, and ensure reliability.
- Own End to End: take features from idea to design to code to test to deploy to monitor. No silos, no handoffs.
- Bake in Security and Compliance: implement RBAC, encryption, audit trails, and logging that comply with FERPA, SOC 2, and HECVAT.
- Make It Observable: build resilient systems with logging, tracing, and fast debugging.
- Multiply with AI: use Cursor, Claude, and Copilot to accelerate output while keeping mastery of your code.
What We’re Looking For
- 5+ years of engineering experience in backend, platform or data systems
- Fluent in Python (our core stack) with strong SQL and data modeling fundamentals
- Experienced with event-driven systems, async workflows, and integrations at scale
- Familiar with agent frameworks and orchestration patterns
- Proven track record of using AI coding tools to deliver far more than peers without cutting quality
- Ideally: former founder, first engineer, or someone who’s been at the ground floor of a high-growth startup.
- Bonus: experience working with higher-education systems
- Meaningful equity stake as an early team member
- Competitive salary and benefits
- A direct hand in shaping how higher education operates at scale
- The opportunity to build and deploy cutting edge AI applications in a highly complex and regulated industry
- Daily collaboration with the founders and close exposure to product, customers, and strategy
Risely is a startup in the truest sense. We are all in. The pace is intense and the work is demanding, but the impact is real. Here is what to expect:
- In-person commitment: we are together in the office 5–6 days a week. Building at this stage requires full presence and focus
- Speed and impact: we measure progress by the day, not the quarter. Your work ships fast and affects students immediately
- Mission clarity: every line of code and every late night ties back to one purpose: helping students stay enrolled and helping colleges survive
- Ownership from day one: you will make critical decisions, drive outcomes, and build Risely alongside the founders
- Deep, meaningful work: you will tackle data complexity, privacy laws, and legacy integrations. The problems are tough, but solving them matters
If this excites you, join us at the ground floor. It will stretch you, challenge you, and demand your best. It will also be the most meaningful work of your career.
About Risely AI
Colleges are in trouble. Today, one in three students drops out, despite millions spent recruiting them. Overburdened staff manually comb through fragmented data, missing critical warning signs until it’s too late. We founded Risely to support the mission of higher education as it undergoes major systemic and technological change.
Backed by Y Combinator, we’re a VC-funded startup building the operating system for colleges. We’re not just saving hours, we’re helping protect institutions, livelihoods, and futures. Higher ed deserves better, and we’re moving fast.
This role is fully in-person at our San Ramon office, with a focus on building together in real time.
Top Skills
Ai Coding Tools
Event-Driven Systems
Python
SQL
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The Company
What We Do
Risely’s AI agents automate administrative and manual tasks across college campuses. Our AI Advisor identifies and flags at-risk students, crafts personalized outreach, and creates tailored success plans - all in natural language. Risely integrates directly into existing university systems (SIS, LMS, CRM) and learns each institution’s unique workflows. This dramatically reduces the $735 billion universities spend annually on administrative labor, expands staff capacity without increasing headcount, and improves the student experience. University workflows require nuanced, autonomous judgment, exactly what agentic AI was designed to solve. Our team uniquely combines deep expertise in higher education, enterprise-scale AI, and regulated enterprise sales. We're grateful to be backed by Y Combinator.
