Founding AI Product Engineer

Title: Founding AI Product Engineer

Reporting to: Krrish CEO (Co-Founder)

Business Need for the Hire:

• Build LiteLLM's second major product alongside the founders.
• Bring on an engineer who can own product development end-to-end, from customer discovery through production.
• Increase product velocity while maintaining close relationships with users.
• Help define product direction as one of the company's first dedicated Product Engineers.

Wider Team and Where This Role Sits:

• Reports directly to Krrish.
• Founding Product Engineer working closely with the founders and engineering team.
• Approximately 50% coding / 50% customer interaction, speaking directly with developers to validate ideas and improve the product.
• One Product Engineer is currently transitioning internally, making this a foundational hire for the team.

Essential Skills Required to Interview a Candidate:

• 2+ years of software engineering experience.
• Strong Python fundamentals (expertise not required).
• Experience building production software from idea to launch.
• Comfortable working across backend APIs, infrastructure, and developer tooling.
• Strong customer empathy and communication skills.
• Startup mentality-comfortable operating in ambiguity and moving quickly.
• Experience building products that gained real users is a significant plus.
• Strong Computer Science fundamentals (top CS programs are viewed favorably but not required).

Questions to Screen Candidates:

• In your ideal role, how much time would you spend coding versus talking to users?
• Tell me about a time you shipped something quickly with incomplete information.
• Tell me about a product you've built from idea to launch.
• Have you built anything that attracted real users? How did you find those users?
• How do you gather customer feedback and decide what to build next?
• Why are you interested in building developer tools and AI infrastructure?

Interview Process:

30-minute introductory conversation with Krrish.

Virtual technical interview (coding and product-thinking; no AI assistance) including:

• Whiteboard and coding exercise.

San Francisco onsite mock customer discovery/product design session.

Selling Points of the Role/Company:

• Founding Product Engineer role with significant ownership.
• Work directly with the founders every day.
• Build LiteLLM's second major product from the ground up.
• 50/50 balance between engineering and product/customer discovery.
• Gateway powering 100+ LLM providers.
• Trusted by companies including Adobe, Netflix, NASA, NVIDIA, and OpenAI.
• ~$15M ARR and growing rapidly while remaining profitable after only a Seed round.
• Small, high-impact engineering team where work ships to production quickly.
• Opportunity to influence product strategy rather than simply implementing features.
• Build products used by thousands of engineering teams worldwide.

Location:

• San Francisco, CA
• 5 days/week onsite

Salary:

• $200K-260K base
• Exceptional candidates on case to case basic can flex to $300K base. This range will be reviewed directly by the founders.

Benefits:

• Competitive equity package
• Medical, Dental & Vision
• 401(k)
• Health benefits

Bonus:

• Performance bonus on a case-by-case basis.

Equity:

• 0.1-0.2%, depending on experience and level.

Visa Sponsorship/Relocation Package:

• Visa sponsorship available.
• Relocation assistance available.
• Potential sign-on bonuses typically $5K-10K to offset forfeited equity, with flexibility for exceptional candidates.

Ideal Start Date:

• ASAP

CV Feedback & Interview Feedback Agreed SLAs:

• Feedback provided immediately after interviews whenever possible.

Additional Notes:

• Looking for builders who naturally create products people actually use.
• Open-source contributions or side projects are strong differentiators.
• Values curiosity, customer empathy, and hustle over being a Python or Rust expert.
• Typical workload is approximately 60 hours/week, reflecting an early-stage startup environment.
• Founders care more about a candidate's ability to build meaningful products than years of experience alone.
• Candidates with exceptional backgrounds or standout products should be surfaced directly to the founders.