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Posted 12 months ago

Founding Engineer (AI)

@ hireVouch

Toronto, Ontario

Hybrid5+ years experience
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SIGNALS

Overview

hireVouch is hiring a Founding Engineer (AI) for an AI-powered market research platform that runs qualitative research at quantitative scale using voice AI and automated analysis. The role owns core product pieces across the stack, from GenAI and voice pipelines to dashboards and scalable infrastructure. Candidates need 5+ years of full-stack experience and a track record of shipping in startups.

Responsibilities:

  • Deploy foundation models for dynamic conversations and thematic analysis
  • Improve voice generation, speech recognition and real-time orchestration pipelines
  • Build full-stack dashboards and collaboration tools
  • Design infrastructure supporting thousands of concurrent AI-mediated interviews
  • Define engineering best practices and mentor early hires

Requirements summary:

  • 5+ years of full-stack software engineering experience
  • Experience shipping production systems in startups (0 to 1 or 1 to 10)
  • Strength in backend, ML/AI pipelines, full-stack or real-time voice infrastructure
  • Interest in applied R&D such as LLMs and speech models
  • Bonus: enterprise SaaS or compute-heavy AI system experience

Tools & skills

Source and dates

Source type not verified · cats

Employer posting date
2025-11-06
First seen by our source
2026-10-10
Source record updated
2026-11-05

These dates describe the source record, not a live verification that the employer is still hiring. Check the original posting.

Job details

SenioritySenior
DepartmentSoftware development
Experience5+ years
Work settingOffice, Home
PositionMostly sitting
Physical demandsphysical low · computer high
LanguagesEnglish

Summary and details written by AI from the posting; the employer’s posting is the authority.

hireVouch

Saved company profile

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Full company description

Our Edge Hiring and retaining skilled talent is paramount for your company’s success. Finding the right people – who have the right skills and right personality fit – can be incredibly challenging in today’s job market. Here at hireVouch we can help you acquire the highest calibre candidates through the relationships we have formed over more than a decade. Our approach is an ethical one. Rather than use the often-employed aggressive methods typical of the recruitment industry, our focus is placed largely on referral-based networking. Getting it right really matters to us. Let us leverage our network of talent that has already been vouched for by leading professionals in the industry to help your business grow. Services Offered Contingency and Retained Search Here at hireVouch we focus on sourcing best-in-class candidates for rewarding positions in Canada and the US. We have extensive expertise in Contingency, Retained and Temporary placement, primarily within the IT sector. On-Site Search Assistance We have a trusted network of HR and search professionals who can provide on-site search services to help fulfill immediate needs as well as help train internal staff in finding the highest quality talent Company Marketing Strategy We know how competitive the job market can truly be and how important it is to have a strategy to attract talent. At hireVouch we have extensive expertise in helping companies better market themselves. We can provide the tools and knowledge that will assist you in making your business a highly attractive place to work. Developing a company marketing strategy is key to hiring the talent you need to grow.

LinkedIn followers
68,412
People associated on LinkedIn
7
Reported office locations
  • 215 Spadina Avenue, 4th Floor, Toronto, Ontario M5T 2C7, CA
Other recorded names
  • hireVouch
Profile identifies a recruitment agency
Yes

Our Edge Hiring and retaining skilled talent is paramount for your company’s success. Finding the right people – who have the right skills and right personality fit – can be incredibly challenging in today’s job market. Here at hireVouch we can help you acquire the highest calibre candidates through the relationships we have formed over more than a decade. Our approach is an ethical one. Rather than use the…

FieldValue
IndustryStaffing and Recruiting
Company size2-10 employees
HeadquartersToronto, Ontario
Organization typePrivately Held
Year founded2016
Open jobs on Jobsy175
LinkedInView page
Job description

About the Company

Our client is an AI-powered market research platform that helps organizations run qualitative research at quantitative scale. Leveraging advanced voice AI and automated analysis, they enable businesses to have natural, real-time conversations with hundreds of customers at once — turning months of traditional research into hours of actionable insights.

They’re reinventing the way companies understand their customers, transforming a historically underserved but critical function that drives innovation, marketing, and product positioning for major brands.

Why Join Them?

Explosive growth:
They’re seeing rapid traction across mid-market and enterprise, including six-figure deals and fast-moving sales cycles.

Clear product-market fit:
Most of their wins come from solving real customer pain points, meaning they rarely need to compete on price.

A naturally viral product:
Insights are easily shared across large teams, creating an organic product-led growth loop.

Elite founding team:
Their founders come from Google Research, Meta, Amazon, and Samsara, bringing deep experience scaling enterprise and PLG SaaS companies.

Huge market opportunity:
Demand for modern customer understanding tools is accelerating — and they’re positioned to become the end-to-end platform of choice for fast, high-quality insight generation.

The Role: Founding Engineer

As a founding engineer, you’ll own major parts of the core product and influence the technical direction from day one. You’ll work across the stack — engineering, research, infrastructure, and product — with work that has immediate and visible impact.

What You’ll Do

  • Push the boundaries of applied GenAI: deploy foundation models for dynamic conversations, reasoning, and large-scale thematic analysis.

  • Innovate in voice & speech AI: improve pipelines for voice generation, speech recognition, and real-time conversation orchestration.

  • Build full-stack product experiences: dashboards, collaboration tools, and intuitive workflows that make research faster and easier.

  • Lead the future of agent-led UX: help shape a backend powered by intelligent agents and experiment with generative UI.

  • Scale infrastructure: design systems that support thousands of concurrent AI-mediated interviews, large datasets, and secure enterprise integrations.

  • Establish engineering excellence: define best practices, mentor early hires, and foster a culture of speed, rigor, and craftsmanship.

  • Collaborate cross-functionally: work closely with Growth and Customers to turn feedback into the right product decisions at the right time.

What They’re Looking For

  • 5+ years of full-stack software engineering experience, ideally with exposure to ML/AI products or infrastructure.

  • A track record of shipping production systems in fast-paced startup environments (0→1 or 1→10).

  • Strength in one or more of: backend systems, ML/AI pipelines, full-stack web development, or real-time/voice infrastructure.

  • Curiosity and willingness to dive deep into applied R&D — LLMs, voice generation, speech recognition, reasoning models.

  • A high-energy builder mindset with a strong bias for action and comfort with ambiguity.

  • Bonus: experience with enterprise SaaS, insights/research tools, or scaling compute-heavy/AI-heavy systems.

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