Founding Engineer

WildcardAEO/GEO for E-Commerce and RetailFounding Engineer$130K - $250K•0.50% - 4.00%•San Francisco, CA, USJob typeFull-timeRoleEngineering, Full stackExperience3+ yearsVisaUS citizen/visa onlyConnect directly with founders of the best YC-funded startups.Apply to role ›Kaushik MahorkerCEOKaushik MahorkerCEOAbout the roleAbout Wildcard Wildcard is the agentic commerce optimization platform for ecommerce and retail brands.

We help brands understand, improve, and monetize how their products show up across AI shopping agents. We’re building the mission control for agentic commerce: visibility (AEO & GEO), recommendations, execution, attribution, and automation in one platform. As shopping shifts from traditional search to AI agents, brands need to know where they appear, why competitors are winning, what to change, and whether those changes drive real business outcomes.

We’re growing 50% month over month. Who you’ll work with You’ll work directly with me, Kaushik Mahorker, founder of Wildcard. Previously at Scale AI, I built the ecommerce enrichment engine behind the company’s largest pilot across 400K SKUs, 2.8M attributes, and hundreds of taxonomies, helping secure $15M+ in contracts with major retailers and marketplaces. That experience made something clear: shopping discovery is being rebuilt for an AI-first world, and most brands are not prepared for the shift.

The role We’re looking for a Founding Engineer to help shape both the product and the company from the earliest stage. This is engineer number one. You are not joining an engineering team. You are helping build one. This role is for someone who can own product and infrastructure end to end: frontend, backend, queues, browser automation, reliability, customer-facing features, and the systems that let us move fast.

You’ll work directly with customers, own critical product decisions, and help decide what gets built, how it gets built, and what we prioritize as the market evolves. We are looking for someone high-agency, fast-moving, and expert-level with AI coding tools. You should use AI to move significantly faster, but not outsource your judgment to it. This market is moving fast. AI shopping agents, agentic commerce protocols, and consumer behavior are all changing in real time.

The ambiguity is the opportunity. Week 0 projects You may work on: Scaling browser orchestration and retrieval infrastructure across AI commerce surfaces Making core workflows reliable with queues, retries, observability, and workflow orchestration Building incrementality and attribution systems tied to revenue outcomes for ecommerce brands Adapting the product to emerging agentic commerce protocols and platform launches Building agents, MCP servers, and new product surfaces across emerging verticals Migrating scrappy early systems into scalable product infrastructure without slowing down execution Shipping customer-driven features quickly while making the right tradeoffs between speed and quality We’re looking for someone who Has prior founding experience, or was early at a Seed, Series A, Series B, or similarly fast-moving company Has strong full-stack experience and can ship independently across the stack Is high-agency, self-directed, and able to turn ambiguity into shipped product Is expert-level with AI coding tools and uses them to move significantly faster Has strong judgment on when to use AI and when not to Moves fast, focuses on outcomes, and knows how to do more with less Brings new ideas constantly and can prioritize at a granular level Is resilient through changing priorities, new information, and mini-pivots Gets excited by ownership, ambiguity, and wearing multiple hats Wants to work in tight feedback loops with customers Has high schlep tolerance and is willing to do unglamorous work when it moves the business forward Can push back, think independently, and still move quickly Preferred experience TypeScript, Node.js, Express, React Postgres, Redis, queues, and async job systems Browser automation, scraping, or retrieval infrastructure Reliable production systems with retries, observability, and workflow orchestration AI agents, including context management, orchestration, tool use, and evals MCP servers, internal developer tools, or workflow products Ecommerce, retail infrastructure, search, attribution, or analytics systems Building codebases and products that work well with agents Why join Most engineers do not get to meaningfully influence whether a company succeeds.

This role is different. You’ll have direct influence over the product, architecture, customers, engineering culture, and company direction from day one. You’ll be able to point to decisions you made and systems you built as part of the reason why. About the interview1. Pending Approval 2. Quick Call with Founder 3. System Design 4. One to two-day work trial 5. Offer Extended 6. Hired About WildcardWildcardFounded:2025Batch:W25Status:ActiveLocation:San Francisco FoundersKaushik Mahorker CEOKaushik Mahorker CEO