The Founding Engineer will architect and build software for AI-powered robots, focusing on scaling deployments and creating an engineering culture. They will collaborate with teams to deliver impactful features and ensure successful rollouts.
Founding Engineer
About Gerra
The Role
What You’ll Do
Who You Are
What Success Looks Like
Compensation
Why This Role Matters
Location: Los Angeles (in-office, 5 days/week)
Compensation: $225K–$300K base + equity
About Gerra
We’re deploying AI-powered robots that are transforming how businesses acquire and serve customers. Our robots drive 5x sales increases and 10x reductions in customer acquisition costs. The model works — now we need a founding engineer to build the systems that let us scale from dozens to hundreds of deployments monthly.
This isn’t about building features. It’s about creating the technical backbone for an entirely new way businesses grow. Think of joining Microsoft in 1985 to help businesses adopt PCs — except this time it’s humanoids redefining how companies acquire labor.
As our Founding Engineer, you’ll architect, build, and ship the software + systems that power real-world robot deployments across retail, hospitality, and live events. You’ll work directly with the founders, sales, and deployment teams to turn pilots into chain-wide rollouts. Every line of code you ship directly translates into millions in ARR and into businesses transforming their customer experience.
This is a ground-floor role with direct ownership over the product and technology stack. You won’t just build — you’ll set the culture, playbooks, and standards for the engineering team we hire around you.
- Build and scale the software platform that powers 100+ robot deployments monthly
- Design APIs, dashboards, and integrations that make robots usable for Fortune 500 clients
- Translate customer outcomes into product features with immediate ROI
- Partner with deployment leads to ensure Day 1 success at retail stores, hotels, and conventions
- Create the engineering culture, tools, and best practices for the first 10+ hires
- Balance speed with scale — shipping fast while architecting for chain-wide rollouts
- You’ve been an early engineer (seed/Series A) at a startup and built v1 → vX products
- Full-stack or back-end strength; comfortable moving between systems, APIs, and infra
- You know the difference between shipping code and shipping transformation
- You’ve owned critical systems where uptime and reliability meant real-world impact
- You thrive on ambiguity and can build in weeks what others scope in quarters
- You want to be measured by impact: robots deployed, revenue generated, customers transformed
- Month 1: Ship features that directly power the first 20+ deployments
- Month 3: Own the technical backbone for 100+ live robots in the field
- Month 6: Build the systems and team that let us scale nationwide rollouts
- Base salary: $225K–$300K
- Equity: Equity in a profitable, fast-growing company
Sales sells the vision. Deployment delivers the transformation. As the Founding Engineer, you build the engine that makes both possible. Every successful deployment isn’t just revenue — it proves that humanoids are the future of business operations.
If you want to define the technical DNA of a profitable, fast-growing company and own the upside of equity in a generational business, let’s talk.
Top Skills
APIs
Robotics
Software Platform
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