Founding AI Engineer

Role Overview

Copperhead is an open-source AI engineering platform for electronics that designs, documents, and validates real printed circuit boards from a written brief. As a Founding AI Engineer, you will design, build, and scale the core systems that translate written requirements into validated PCB designs, working directly with the founder to define the product and foundational architecture.

Responsibilities

• Build AI agents that plan, generate, modify, and verify PCB designs
• Develop reliable tool-use, context, evaluation, and orchestration systems
• Improve schematic generation, PCB layout, component selection, and datasheet understanding
• Integrate LLMs with KiCad, deterministic verification tools, and open-source EDA infrastructure
• Design production-quality backend systems and developer-facing interfaces
• Improve system reliability, performance, observability, and test coverage
• Own projects from initial exploration through production deployment
• Contribute to technical documentation and open-source engineering practices
• Help establish Copperhead’s engineering culture and development processes

Requirements

• Strong software engineering skills in Python, TypeScript, Go, or Rust
• Experience building AI products, intelligent agents, model integrations, or workflow orchestration systems
• Ability to write clean, tested, and maintainable production code
• Sound understanding of system design, APIs, infrastructure, performance, and monitoring
• Comfort working through ambiguous technical problems and owning outcomes end to end
• Strong written and verbal communication skills
• Interest in electronics, hardware design, or PCB engineering

Nice to Have

• Experience building developer tools or open-source software
• Familiarity with KiCad or other EDA tools
• Experience with LLM evaluation, structured generation, or agent reliability
• Contributions to technically ambitious open-source projects
• Prior experience at an early-stage startup

Skills

• Python
• TypeScript
• LLMs
• KiCad
• System Design