What are the responsibilities and job description for the Founding Front-End / Design Engineer position at Mentor Talent Acquisition?
Location: NYC (In-Person)
Type: Full-time | Early-stage startup | Open Source
A well-funded, open-source startup is building a cutting-edge platform to optimize LLM (Large Language Model) applications by transforming production data into smarter, faster, and more cost-efficient models.
Their product enables a continuous feedback loop and learning flywheel for LLMs by unifying:
- Inference: A single API for all LLMs, with lightning-fast performance
- Observability: Real-time insight into inference and feedback
- Optimization: From prompt tuning to fine-tuning and reinforcement learning
- Experimentation: Built-in tools for A/B testing, routing, and fallbacks
The team started building in early 2024 and recently completed a successful pilot, launching their open-source project later that year. Backed by top-tier investors with a strong financial runway, the focus is now entirely on open-source growth and innovation.
About the Role
They are looking for a Founding Member of the Technical Team with a front-end or design engineering background to help shape the interface layer of their system. This is not a traditional "front-end only" role - the team values engineers with a broad interest across the stack, and encourages deep technical ownership and curiosity.
You’d start by building the first open-source UI to manage the entire operation - think "developer console for LLMs." The system already collects observability data, but lacks a user-friendly way to consume and interact with it.
- Work on open-source projects with a meaningful mission
- Tackle high-impact engineering challenges in a fast-moving, technical team
- Shape the product and company from the earliest stage
- Collaborate with a group of researchers, backend experts, and ML specialists
- Grow beyond your role - dive into Rust, ML, infrastructure, or whatever excites you
Ideal Background
- Strong experience in front-end software engineering (React, Remix, Tailwind, etc.)
- Passion for developer tools, design systems, and clean UI/UX
- Comfortable owning end-to-end feature development, from concept to deployment
- Excited by early-stage environments and open-ended problems
- Open to learning new tools and diving into other areas of the stack
- Available to work in-person in NYC, five days a week
What They Offer
- Competitive salary, equity, and benefits
- A deeply technical, collaborative team environment
- Opportunities for fast learning and growth
- A long-term mindset with support from world-class investors
- The chance to make a visible impact in a rapidly evolving space
