Founding Engineer

Founding Engineer – Lava (NYC)

Be on the ground floor of how the world builds and monetizes AI.

Lava ( is building the core infrastructure and payments layer for the AI internet, enabling the APIs, monitoring, and payments systems necessary to make AI-native products possible. We're looking for an early engineering hire to help define how and what we build.

What You'll Do

• Work on cutting-edge problems at the intersection of AI, payments, and infrastructure
• Build integrations with AI providers, payment systems, and developer tools
• Collaborate closely with the founder, product, and sales to set the technical direction and architecture
• Join sales development calls when needed, acting as a forward-deployed engineer who can bridge tech and customer needs
• Move fast, adapt to ambiguity, and help shape the culture and processes from day one

What We're Looking For

• Driven, resourceful, and self-motivated, thriving in open-ended, fast-changing environments
• Deep engineering experience, ideally full stack with a strong backend focus
• Strong grasp of system design and building for scale
• Hands-on AI user who actively experiments with and integrates AI tools
• Experience with payments, infrastructure, or developer tooling is a plus
• Comfortable switching between building, selling, and learning from users

Why You'll Love This Role

• You'll be solving one of the hardest and most important problems in AI, building the infrastructure and payments layer that makes AI-native products possible
• Work in a small, tight-knit, and highly motivated team that stays focused on outcomes and winning without unnecessary distractions
• Work directly with a founder who deeply understands payments and has built in this space before
• Be part of a company operating at the cutting edge of AI, where speed, ownership, and impact matter more than process
• The media is already excited about what we're building: read our TechCrunch feature here (
• Significant influence over technical and product decisions from day one
• Help shape how an entirely new market, AI-to-AI commerce, gets built

If you're excited about owning big problems, building products people need, and having a direct hand in how the future of AI commerce works, we'd love to talk.