Founding Sotware Engineer

Founding Software Engineer - Advanced Manufacturing

📍 Los Angeles — five days per week onsite

💰 Base salary of $180,000

The Opportunity

Join an early-stage advanced manufacturing and defense-technology company accelerating the transition to advanced materials.

The company combines AI software, robotics, and full-stack manufacturing to reinvent how high-performance composite parts are designed and produced. Its automated domestic factories will enable unmanned aircraft, undersea vehicles, space systems, and other critical hardware to be manufactured at mass scale rather than as bespoke products.

The company raised a $17 million seed round, the largest in Entrepreneurs First’s history, and is backed by investors who were early believers in Applied Intuition, Astranis, Factory, Flock Safety, Relativity Space, and Valar Atomics.

The Role

As a Founding Software Engineer, you will build the software connecting raw materials, part design, simulation, factory operations, and the finished product.

You will join a team of approximately five people and work alongside world-class hardware, robotics, and composites engineers. This is a high-autonomy role with broad ownership and direct influence over the product, technical architecture, and company.

What You’ll Do

• Build Argos, the operating system orchestrating the journey from raw material to finished part, including supply chain, quoting, and pricing
• Develop Argos Sim, covering CAD automation, design for manufacturing, mold generation, and composite-part simulation
• Create tools that shorten design cycles and make advanced components easier to specify and manufacture
• Integrate real-time equipment and sensor data into a continuously updated factory digital twin
• Build factory-automation systems capable of supporting reliable, 24/7 production
• Develop internal software for engineers and operators alongside customer-facing product workflows
• Establish foundational practices for testing, deployment, observability, and reliability
• Own consequential technical problems from definition through production

What We’re Looking For

• At least two years of experience shipping production-grade software
• Strong frontend ability with TypeScript and/or backend experience with Python or Go
• A track record of delivering high-quality products at meaningful scale
• Strong software engineering and computer science fundamentals
• High agency, urgency, and learning velocity
• The ability to work independently, resolve ambiguity, and keep building
• A desire to continuously master your craft
• Comfort working across traditional software boundaries and directly with physical systems

We value slope over intercept: what matters most is what you have built, how quickly you learn, and the ownership you take.

Nice to Have

• Experience with manufacturing processes, industrial automation, or production tooling
• Experience integrating software with robotics, equipment, or sensor systems
• Familiarity with CAD, computational geometry, or 3D environments
• Knowledge of simulation, optimization, or numerical methods
• Experience building digital twins or factory-control systems

This May Not Be for You If

• You do not want to get your hands dirty or build in the physical world
• You rely on dedicated product management, QA, or design teams to move work forward
• You need multiple rounds of review before shipping
• You prefer narrowly defined responsibilities, predictable problems, or extensive process
• You are uncomfortable making important decisions with incomplete information

The Culture

Everyone owns problems end to end and makes consequential decisions that shape the outcome. The environment is intense, fast-moving, and built for people who want to attempt what others consider impossible.

There is little bureaucracy. Meals are covered, along with tools and products that make employees more productive and support the people around them.

Why Join?

🚀 The ambition is to do for composites what Bethlehem Steel did for steel.

For too long, the world’s most advanced materials have been confined to exquisite, low-volume applications. This team is industrializing composites so the systems of the future can be built at mass scale, strengthening the West’s manufacturing base and competitive position in strategically important industries.

You will join early, work directly with the founders, and help define the software foundation of a new manufacturing model.

Visa sponsorship is not available.