Demo
Salary Resume Critique Job Openings

Founding Engineer - Kato

Pear VC
San Francisco, CA Full Time
POSTED ON 2/8/2025
AVAILABLE BEFORE 5/8/2025

About the Job

Position : Founding Engineer

Reporting to : CTO

Location : San Francisco (4 days / week in person)

Company Overview

Lenders are spending $58BN annually today on hiring humans to perform manual, repetitive work for servicing their loan portfolios. This spend is ineffective - humans are expensive and they make mistakes that lead to compliance fines.

At Kato, we are building an AI-powered loan servicing platform across all communication channels to redefine how loan servicing gets done. With Kato, servicing teams can consist of a single senior operations leader that is managing Kato's AI agents and only reviewing cases that require escalation.

We are starting today with a compliance first Voice AI agent to automate outbound loan servicing calls, and are already working with customers in the credit card, auto, and SMB lending spaces.

Leadership Team

  • Pratik Risbud (CEO / Co-Founder) : Former Investment Banker at Goldman Sachs and led Credit / Operations at Brex
  • David Zhu (CTO / Co-Founder) : Former Software Engineer at Google and Engineering Manager at Brex

Kato is backed by institutional capital from Pear VC and angel investors from top tech companies including Brex, Bridge, and Square.

The Role

We're seeking a driven, high-impact Founding Engineer to join at this critical growth stage. As our first engineering hire, you'll have an unparalleled opportunity to shape our technical foundation and future.

You'll own mission-critical projects driving company success, initially focusing on enhancing our voice agent quality (latency optimization, interrupt handling, LLM prompting). The role spans our entire technical stack - from real-time voice processing to customer-facing dashboards, infrastructure scaling, and product expansion. There will be significant opportunities to define product direction, build out engineering best practices and technical standards, and rapidly grow your scope and career.

Reporting directly to the CTO, this full-time role includes significant equity ownership.

Key Responsibilities

  • Lead architecture and implementation of our real-time voice processing system
  • Design and build scalable, fault-tolerant distributed systems
  • Optimize LLM integration for natural, compliance-aware conversations
  • Develop internal tools for voice agent monitoring and improvement
  • Build customer-facing dashboards and reporting systems
  • Partner with customers to translate requirements into technical solutions
  • Establish engineering best practices and technical standards
  • Drive technical decisions that shape product direction

    • Requirements

    Must Have :

  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field
  • 2-5 years of production software engineering experience
  • Strong background in API design
  • Experience with cloud infrastructure (AWS / GCP)
  • Excellent problem-solving and architectural thinking
  • Strong communication and organizational skills
  • Owner's mindset" with bias for action

    • Nice to Have :

  • Experience with real-time audio processing or WebRTC
  • Background in Golang, TypeScript, or React
  • Experience with LLMs and prompt engineering
  • DevOps and infrastructure automation experience
  • Fintech or financial systems background

    • Tech Stack

  • Backend : Golang, PostgreSQL
  • Frontend : Next.js, TypeScript, React, TailwindCSS
  • Infrastructure : AWS, Terraform, Kubernetes, Docker
  • AI / ML : Large Language Models, Speech To Text, Text To Speech

    • Why Join Us

  • Work with experienced founders who've built and scaled financial products for 9 years
  • Work with a CTO with experience in all stages of engineering maturity from 0 to 1, mid-stage startups, all the way to large enterprise companies
  • Shape the technical foundation of a product revolutionizing a $58BN market
  • Significant equity package as a founding engineer
  • Direct impact on product strategy and company direction
  • Rapid career growth - opportunity to build and lead your own team as we scale
  • Work with cutting-edge technologies in AI, voice processing, and cloud infrastructure
  • Define engineering culture and practices from the ground up

    • Join us in building the future of loan servicing with AI.

    Salary : $58

    If your compensation planning software is too rigid to deploy winning incentive strategies, it’s time to find an adaptable solution. Compensation Planning
    Enhance your organization's compensation strategy with salary data sets that HR and team managers can use to pay your staff right. Surveys & Data Sets

    What is the career path for a Founding Engineer - Kato?

    Sign up to receive alerts about other jobs on the Founding Engineer - Kato career path by checking the boxes next to the positions that interest you.
    Income Estimation: 
    $80,938 - $103,149
    Income Estimation: 
    $83,263 - $123,666
    Income Estimation: 
    $156,679 - $196,968
    Income Estimation: 
    $222,941 - $284,552
    Income Estimation: 
    $77,657 - $95,021
    Income Estimation: 
    $97,257 - $120,701
    Income Estimation: 
    $97,257 - $120,701
    Income Estimation: 
    $123,167 - $152,295
    Income Estimation: 
    $123,167 - $152,295
    Income Estimation: 
    $146,673 - $180,130
    Employees: Get a Salary Increase
    View Core, Job Family, and Industry Job Skills and Competency Data for more than 15,000 Job Titles Skills Library

    Job openings at Pear VC

    Founding Engineer - Vecflow
    Pear VC
    Hired Organization Address New York, NY Full Time
    Why Vecflow? The next few years will revolutionize how we interact with computers. It's not just chat; it's advanced ret...
    Product Manager (Endless Commerce)
    Pear VC
    Hired Organization Address Los Angeles, CA Full Time
    Who we are : At Endless Commerce, we're transforming multi-channel commerce infrastructure with a platform that streamli...
    Backend Software Engineer - TeachShare
    Pear VC
    Hired Organization Address New York, NY Full Time
    About Us At TeachShare, we're building one of the fastest-growing AI classroom productivity tools-helping teachers creat...
    Brand Manager - Kale
    Pear VC
    Hired Organization Address New York, NY Full Time
    Company Overview : Kale's mission is to empower people to translate their social value into economic value. With our foc...
    View More Jobs at Pear VC

    Not the job you're looking for? Here are some other Founding Engineer - Kato jobs in the San Francisco, CA area that may be a better fit.

    Founding Engineer

    Avoca, San Francisco, CA

    Founding Engineer

    Menlo Ventures, San Francisco, CA

    View More Jobs

    AI Assistant is available now!

    Feel free to start your new journey!