Skip to main content

AnswerThis

Founding Engineering Lead

San Francisco, California, United States

Location
San Francisco, California, United States
Work
On-site
Employment
Full-time
Level
Lead / staff
Function
Engineering
Pay
$170K – $240K a year
Posted
2 months ago

Pay and the market here

The top of this role’s range, $240K a year, is 18% below the median of $292K for lead / staff engineering jobs in San Francisco (middle half $250K – $350K, 934 jobs that state pay).

5,128 engineering jobs open in San Francisco: 9% remote, 1,038 posted in the last 30 days.

Wondering how well you fit this one? OptiTalent Career checks each requirement against your own record, privately. About OptiTalent Career →

About the role

AnswerThis is building the research workspace for scientific knowledge inside enterprises. Our agents search, synthesize, and draft evidence-based research autonomously. More than 200,000 researchers use the platform across universities and Fortune 500 companies. We’re YC-backed, growing fast, and small on purpose.

What we’re solving

Trillions of dollars flow into global R&D every year. Researchers still spend enormous amounts of time manually finding papers, writing literature reviews, and assembling evidence packages. This work decides whether new drugs and medical devices reach patients. We’re turning it into a living, compounding system.

Who we’re looking for

A senior engineer who has built AI agent systems in production and led teams at startups. You have shipped under uncertainty, without perfect specs, on timelines that did not make sense on paper.

You will own the technical architecture and product velocity end to end, from customer problem to deployed solution. You will work directly with enterprise customers, make hard scope calls with limited information, and measure success by business impact.

You will build the engineering team over time. You know what works at three engineers breaks at ten, and you want to design that transition.

What you’ll own

  • Architecture and execution across Next.js, Python/FastAPI, retrieval, agents, and production infrastructure
  • Fast product iteration with researchers and enterprise customers
  • Reliability, quality, and observability for high-stakes scientific workflows
  • The engineering culture and team we build next

Interview process

  • 20-minute culture screen
  • One-hour technical deep dive
  • Take-home
  • Two-week paid trial

Compensation

$170,000–$240,000+ base with 0.2%–0.5% equity.

This role is in person in San Francisco. If you have only operated inside large engineering organizations with established processes, or optimize for elegance over business impact, this is not the right fit.

Source

Posted by AnswerThis on their own hiring page, jobs.ashbyhq.com. OptiTalent shows it as published, read 08 Nov 2026 14:00 UTC; the original is the reference.

View the original ad ↗

More at AnswerThis

  • AnswerThis · United States

    RemoteFull-timeLead / staffFrom $150K a yearMarketing

    You've already scaled paid acquisition and SEO. Now you want your next chapter to help accelerate science.