Founding Engineer
Founding Engineer at Cardinal Gray — New York, NY, US
- Company: Cardinal Gray
- Location: New York, NY, US
- Employment type: FULL_TIME
- Salary: USD 120000–160000 / year
- Posted: 2026-07-17
About this role
This is a full-time, on-site role in New York City for someone who can build product and drive outcomes with customers.
This is not a role for someone who wants clean abstractions, perfect APIs, or slow roadmaps. You will ship production fixes, deploy automations, talk to operators, and help close deals — often in the same week.
What you’ll do:
Own integrations with lenders, vendors, and state-specific processes (often inconsistent and hostile to automation)
Debug and harden systems that deal with messy inputs: OCR outputs, missing data, DMV rejection loops, inconsistent county requirements
Work directly with customers: gather requirements, explain workflows, manage pilots, and turn adoption into expansion
Support live operations when needed
Help design the product by being close to the pain: rejections, backlog, chase cycles, etc.
You will be expected to:
Write code that directly impacts revenue and customer retention
Communicate confidently with collateral teams, ops teams, and decision-makers
Be a “founder energy” operator: see problems, fix problems, close problems
You are a strong fit if you have:
Strong computer science fundamentals and engineering judgment
Real backend experience (TypeScript / Node preferred; AWS + cloud workflows a plus)
High ownership
Ability to communicate clearly with customers and translate pain into product
Entrepreneurial temperament: you like chaotic problems and moving fast
Bonus (but not required):
Experience in fintech, lending, B2B SaaS, or compliance-heavy workflows
Sales instinct: you can tell what a customer actually needs vs. what they’re asking for
Experience working with large enterprise clients (pilots, rollouts, expansions)