Founding Engineer
Founding Engineer at Trelium — IN, US
- Company: Trelium
- Location: IN, US
- Employment type: FULL_TIME
- Salary: USD 25000–35000 / year
- Posted: 2026-07-17
About this role
We’re looking for a Founding Engineer to help build the core systems that power Questom.
This is not a framework-specialist role. It’s not about perfect abstractions on day one. It is about systems thinking, ownership, and the ability to stitch together complex infrastructure into something that works — fast.
You’ll be one of a very small group shaping not just the product, but how the company builds.
What You’ll Do
Build systems that connect everything
Design and build high-performance systems that connect:
Communication platforms (voice, SMS, email, chat)
Agentic workflows
External tools like CRMs and internal APIs
Stitch together APIs, workflows, and agents into cohesive systems that actually run in production
Think deeply about how these systems scale across many customers with different data sources and configurations
Build agentic workflows
Create workflows where agents:
Handle live conversations
Pull context from systems like Salesforce
Log outcomes in tools like HubSpot
Take real actions on behalf of users
Focus on giving agents the right information at the right time and designing systems that make this repeatable across customers
Turn ambiguity into working software
Start from half-baked ideas, rough customer conversations, or incomplete requirements
Ship a 90% working solution quickly
Iterate toward something more general, scalable, and high quality
Own what you build
Take end-to-end ownership: design → build → ship → improve
Break things thoughtfully — and fix them yourself
Make judgment calls without needing constant guidance
What Success Looks Like
In the first 30 days
Sit in a few customer conversations
Identify a real pain point
Propose a product or feature to solve it
Build and ship an end-to-end solution that delivers real value
In the first 90 days
Take learnings from multiple customer builds
Start shaping more general-purpose systems
Help lay the foundation for a platform that can scale to many customers — and eventually very large companies
How We Build
We use modern tools aggressively and expect you to learn quickly:
Agentic workflow frameworks
Communication infrastructure
AI agent SDKs
We rely heavily on coding agents and automation — curiosity and systems understanding matter more than syntax mastery
We build fast, then make it better
We’re opinionated, iterative, and comfortable changing direction when a simpler solution delivers customer value
What Matters (and What Doesn’t)
What matters a lot
Systems thinking
Ownership
Comfort with ambiguity
Curiosity and fast learning
Product taste (what’s worth building vs not)
Respect for how other people think
What doesn’t matter much
Deep expertise in any single framework or language
Pixel-perfect UI work
Writing perfect SQL by hand
Knowing our exact stack on day one
If you understand how modern web systems, APIs, workflows, and agents fit together — and you’re excited to learn the rest — you’re in great shape.
How We Work
Fast, opinionated, iterative
Disagreements are encouraged and happen openly
We build first, think later — but we do think
You won’t be micromanaged
You will be trusted with real responsibility early
Who You Are
You likely describe yourself as:
Extremely curious
Highly independent
Comfortable operating without a map
Someone who enjoys connecting dots across systems
High-EQ and collaborative
You want to be deeply involved — not just shipping tickets, but helping build a company.
Who Should Not Apply
If you need clear specs and guardrails to do your best work
If you prefer working in isolation
If you’re uncomfortable with constant ambiguity
If you don’t enjoy discussing ideas, systems, and tradeoffs with a small team
If you want a narrow role instead of broad ownership
If reading this makes you feel slightly intimidated but very excited, that’s intentional — and probably a good sign.