Founding AI Engineer

Daylight powers procurement for low-carbon industry. We help scale solutions in clean fuels, industrial heat, cement, and steel — sectors responsible for over one-third of global emissions.

Weʼre hiring a founding engineer to build the core intelligence layer of our product. Youʼll work directly with the founder to automate structured contracting, extract insights from messy data and compliance documents, and support smarter purchasing.

Seeking a mission-aligned engineer committed to industrial decarbonization, with strong GenAI/agent systems experience (LLM orchestration, retrieval, tool-use) and solid backend skills (Python/TypeScript, APIs, data pipelines, security). You can translate procurement workflows into usable software, prototype fast, and ship to production.

You operate autonomously, prioritize ruthlessly, set clear milestones, and bring a calm, analytical, low-ego presence that complements big-picture energy. Bonus: marketplace experience, carbon compliance (LCFS, 45Z, EU), LangChain, AWS/GCP, and unit-economics modeling. SF Bay Area preferred (or strong time-zone overlap). Ready for co-founder-level responsibility, equity-heavy comp, and startup volatility.

What youʼll do:

• Build AI-native workflows for structured contract generation and clause-level review
• Implement LLM agents and retrieval pipelines for negotiation prep, scoring, and summarization
• Convert procurement, compliance, supply chain data into usable structured formats
• Ship fast and shape the product with real users
• Sit with users and get to know their workflows like a Forward Deployed Engineer

You might be a fit if:

• Youʼve built with LLMs, MCPs, vector DBs, and orchestration frameworks including LangChain or LlamaIndex
• Youʼve shipped production-grade tools (not just demos)
• You care about usability and building things that matter
• Youʼre excited to use AI to accelerate climate impact
• You have experience as a forward-deployed engineer, working directly with customers
• You've built custom AI solutions that solve real business problems
• You're comfortable translating complex technical concepts for non-technical stakeholders
• Bonus: marketplace experience; carbon compliance (LCFS, 45Z, EU); LangChain; AWS/GCP; unit-economics modeling; trading
• Bonus: experience with B2B SaaS, contracts, or procurement systems

What we're looking for:
We're seeking someone who is deeply motivated by climate impact and energized by the challenge of building something from the ground up. You should be:

• Wildly driven and curious, with a burning desire to throw yourself into the fire of an early-stage startup
• Someone who compulsively builds at all hours of the day, consistently teaches themselves new topics, and often works on side projects late into the night
• Someone with a history of obscure intellectual obsessions—you care deeply about understanding everything there is to know about a subject most people know little about

What's the hardest you ever worked on something? How many hours per week were you working? Why did you work so hard / why did you care? Was it worth it?

Application Process:
📬 Email [email protected] with your LinkedIn and a blurb about you. Weʼre backed by leading climate investors and advised by individuals from the DOE and leading energy infrastructure investment firms.

Last Updated: Oct 2025