Founding Engineer @ Cua (YC X25)

Job description:

**Cua is building the infrastructure that lets general AI agents safely and scalably use Computers and Apps like humans do.**
With **8.9k
- GitHub stars in just 4 months** and backing from **Y Combinator**, we’re providing:
* An open-source framework for building and evaluating general-purpose AI agents
* A cloud container platform for sandboxed, scalable agent execution environments
* A blueprint for what production-grade general agent systems should look like 
- backed by research
We're looking for our **first Founding Engineer** to help us push this vision forward 
- turning cutting-edge research prototypes into real, deployable systems.
If you’re obsessed with developer tools, infrastructure, and making AI agents go from toy demos to robust, real-world tools 
- we want to talk.
* * *
### 🛠️ What You'll Work On
* **Day 1 Impact** 
- Ship infrastructure powering real agent workloads used by early customers and open-source users.
* **Agent Infra Core**
* OS-level sandboxing and container orchestration across cloud providers
* Scalable infrastructure for deploying isolated Linux/macOS environments for agents
* Tools that make agent deployment as simple as an API call
* **Beyond Engineering**
* **Open Source Leadership** 
- Shape our growing GitHub community and help define the standard for AI agent systems
* **Product Strategy** 
- Work directly with the founders on roadmap and direction
* **Dev Advocacy** 
- Help grow the ecosystem with blog posts, community engagement, and in-person events in SF
* * *
### 🎯 You’re a Fit If You…
* **Live and breathe systems** 
- You know how to scale infra, secure containers, and debug hairy cloud issues.
* **Build for abstraction** 
- You’re excited about designing simple APIs over complex infrastructure.
* **Care about quality** 
- You understand why reproducibility, isolation, and reliability are core to agent workloads.
* **Think long-term** 
- You’re not here to build another wrapper 
- you’re here to define a category.
* * *
### 🎓 What You Bring
* BS in CS (or equivalent experience) 
- 2
- years shipping real systems in **Python, Go, TypeScript, or Rust**
* Infra experience: building secure, scalable, performant backend systems
* Familiarity with LLM-generated code and tools (e.g. Copilot, Cursor) 
- and how to work with or around them
* Ability to navigate ambiguity and move fast without breaking the wrong things
**Bonus points for:**
* Deep experience with Docker, KVM, or OS virtualization
* Multi-cloud experience (GCP, AWS, Azure)
* PostgreSQL optimization war stories
* Meaningful open-source contributions
* * *
### 💼 What We Offer
* **Stage** 
- Backed by YC and top investors, building the founding team
* **Location** 
- SF-based, hybrid preferred, remote-friendly
* **Comp** 
- $100K–$150K base 
- **0.5% equity**
* **Timing** 
- Join early enough to shape product, culture, and architecture from the ground up
* **Impact** 
- Thousands of developers already use Cua; you’ll help define how agents run in production
* * *
### 🧪 How to Apply
* Your GitHub (required)
* A short note about the hardest infra problem you’ve solved
* Bonus: Fix an issue or build something with Cua 
- our open-source project is active and ready
🌐 **Learn more**: [trycua.com](http://trycua.com)
_Interested persons may send their application with authorization in accordance with legislative decree 196/2003. The search respects legislative decree 198/2006 and is open to candidates of any orientation or expression of gender, sexual orientation, age, ethnicity, and religious belief. This advertisement is designed with diversity and inclusiveness in mind._

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