Source: Paraform - https://www.paraform.com/share/arzana/cmtc4qk4n01px0cl1kt6filqr
Compensation: $215,000-$235,000 base + 0.25%-0.5% equity. Up to $10,000 relocation support.
Location: New York, NY - on-site 5 days/week; ~5 days/month travel to customer plants. Visa: Open to visa transfers (OPT, H1B transfers); but requires U.S. person under ITAR (22 CFR 120.62).
About this role
We are looking for a Founding AI Product Engineer with 3-6 years of experience to own and productize the core backend platform at Arzana, a YC-backed AI company automating the front office of American manufacturing. You'll be one of four or five engineers who build the agent runtime, extraction frameworks, and integration infrastructure that powers all 22+ customers. Greenfield role with real ownership. Split: 75% backend productization / 25% UI and customer-facing.
What you will be doing
Build and own a core backend domain (agent runtime, extraction pipelines, ERP integration frameworks, or evals)
Productize/unify six overlapping order entry tools from 20% to 80-85% code reuse
Pair with Forward Deployed Engineers and decide what goes into the platform
Ship fast; customers go live in under a week
Occasional travel to customer plants
Tech stack
Python, PostgreSQL, AWS (Bedrock, EC2, S3), Next.js, React, Google Vertex AI, Claude, GPT, RAG, VLM Extraction, AI Agents, Agentic Pipelines, ERP Integrations, MES Integrations
About Arzana
AI platform automating the front office of American manufacturing (order entry, quoting, RFQ, purchasing, AP/AR, customer service). Founded 2025 by Marshall Kools and William Alexander (Stanford engineers). YC P26, $4.3M seed, 8 employees, 22 customers, 100K+ POs processed, 30% MoM growth. Mission: fully automate 10,000 factories by 2035.
Production AI systems experience (multi-step agents, RAG, VLM extraction, evals)
Strong Python; backend/data/cloud (AWS); full-stack a plus
Proven end-to-end product ownership
CS/STEM Bachelor's minimum; founder/CTO/founding engineer experience strongly preferred
U.S. person (ITAR); in or willing to relocate to NYC
3-6 years in product, systems, or full-stack engineering