Staff / Senior Engineer

About

About Varick Agents

Custom AI agents for enterprise

About the role

Varick is hiring a Founding Engineer to lead the platform's technical direction. You design the architecture, set the engineering standards, and make the build-vs-buy decisions that determine whether Varick becomes a generational platform or stays a services business. This is not a senior IC seat inside someone else's org. You are the person defining the system. The platform turns operational audit artifacts into autonomous agent orchestration. Every client deployment compounds the product. You lead the technical work that makes that compounding real, from the agent framework and orchestration layer to the infrastructure that scales Varick from 1:1 to 1:many. As one specific surface, Varick is building the AI FDE: an agent that does the work of a forward-deployed engineer, scoping problems, writing and integrating code, and standing up production systems alongside the people who run them. This role has a direct path to the CTO role.

What you'll own

• Own the technical architecture: agent orchestration, process mining infrastructure, diagnostic pipelines, and the control plane that turns audit outputs into deployed AI systems
• Architect compound AI systems running inside Fortune 5000 environments: multi-step agents, retrieval pipelines, evaluation frameworks, human-in-the-loop governance
• Set the engineering pace. Varick ships to production weekly, not quarterly. Drive velocity, cut scope ruthlessly.
• Recruit, mentor, and lead engineers. Set code review standards, establish processes, and build a team that scales from 5 to 50.
• Bridge research and production: stay current on foundation models, agent frameworks, inference optimization, tool use, long-context reasoning, and translate what's useful into production systems

Requirements

Must-have

• Strong signal of exceptional technical ability. Years of experience is not a hard filter; recent company quality and demonstrated output are.
• Has built and shipped systems at a top AI lab (Google DeepMind, OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, Meta FAIR) OR as a founding or senior engineer at a high-signal AI-native startup
• Deep production AI/ML systems experience across the full stack: inference, orchestration, evaluation, and monitoring. Not just fine-tuning notebooks.
• Strong systems design instincts: architects for reliability, scale, and iteration speed simultaneously
• High agency, recruits well, takes responsibility for outcomes, not just code. Based in SF or willing to relocate. 5 days a week in-person.

Nice-to-have

• Agent systems, compound AI workflows, or LLM-powered applications in production
• Background in process mining, workflow automation, or enterprise integration
• Infrastructure depth: Kubernetes, distributed systems, cloud architecture
• Previous founding engineer or CTO experience at a venture-backed startup
• Published research or significant open-source contributions in AI/ML

Benefits & perks

• Founding team scope and ownership of entire technical vision
• Direct path to CTO
• Build platform, not features
• 100% deployment rate with immediate measurable impact
• Compounding leverage from every client deployment
• Direct access to Fortune 5000 decision-makers
• Work on systems that improve with every customer

Interview process

1. 1Application Review
2. 2Initial Screen
3. 3First Round
4. 4Second Round
5. 5Third Round
6. 6On Site
7. 7Offer
8. 8Hired