Founding Engineer - Elo

Pear Vc
San Francisco, US
On-site

Who this role is best for

Aimed at mid-level engineers with low-latency systems experience who thrive in independent, fast-moving startup environments.

Best fit for

  • Engineers who have designed high-frequency trading or similar low-latency systems.
    — “High frequency trading systems”
  • Candidates comfortable building scalable infrastructure with variable demand.
    — “Scalable and self-healing infrastructure with 1000s of compute workers”
  • Developers who prioritize speed and leverage AI to accelerate output.
    — “Ship extremely fast and effectively use AI to accelerate your impact”

Things to consider

  • Role requires handling millions of requests per minute with strict latency constraints.
    — “millions of requests per minute”
  • Expectation to operate independently with high ownership of outcomes.
    — “Take extreme ownership of outcomes”

How to stand out

  • Demonstrate specific examples of low-latency pipeline optimizations in past projects.
    — “Low latency network infrastructure and data pipelines”
  • Highlight experience designing real-time observability for high-throughput systems.
    — “Observability stack: real-time dashboards”
  • Showcase AI-assisted development workflows in your technical process.
    — “effectively use AI to accelerate your impact”
Pace · Fast PacedCollaboration · LowAutonomy · HighDecision Impact · CompanyLevel · Lead

Derived from job-description analysis by Serendipath's career intelligence engine.

What success looks like

  • designing the engine for ad delivery inside AI experiences
  • building and improving core infrastructure
Typical background
evidence of technical excellence in building complex systems

Skills & requirements

Required

Ad-decisioning-pipelinePublisher-sdkDelivery-infrastructureObservability-stackLow-latency-network-infrastructureScalable-infrastructureSelf-healing-infrastructure

Preferred

Ai-agent-harnessMulti-agent-workflowHigh-frequency-trading-systems

Stack & domain

AIAd Decisioning PipelinePublisher SdkDelivery InfrastructureObservability StackLeadershipOwnershipIndependenceAd-networkAi InfrastructureAd Delivery

About the role

Original posting from Pear Vc via Ashby

Elo is the ad-network for consumer AI applications. We’ve gone from 0 to XXM users in our publisher network in 45 days of inception.

Background

With AI becoming the primary surface of interaction for internet users, it is inevitable that digital advertising will happen within AI experiences (including but not limited to chat).

Elo is aggregating supply across consumer AI apps to help them monetize their users via ads and help advertisers reach the right audience at the right moment.

We’re backed by top funds like PearVC https://pear.vc/ and Audacious Ventures https://audacious.co/ who’ve invested in billion dollar companies like Doordash and WorkOS https://workos.com/. We also have advisors from mobile ad-tech and large consumer AI companies helping us in our mission. Founder is a published researcher and has previously built AI infrastructure at Google.

Progress

We’ve already solved the hardest cold start problem with ad networks: onboarding both advertisers and publishers. Now, we need to build and improve the core infrastructure to serve the most contextually relevant ads at the right moment.

Role

Founding engineer who’ll help us design the engine for ad delivery inside AI experiences and supporting infrastructure. The role guarantees high equity and competitive compensation ($170K-$220K)

What you’ll build

We’re already processing millions of requests per minute which is set to increase dramatically over the next few months.

You’ll work on:

  • Ad decisioning pipeline: candidate retrieval, scoring, filtering, and final ranking under strict latency SLAs
  • Publisher SDK: lightweight integration that AI app developers embed in hours, not days
  • Delivery infrastructure: pacing, frequency capping, budget management, and campaign throttling
  • Observability stack: real-time dashboards for auction win rates, fill rates, revenue, and latency percentiles

What we’re looking for

We look for evidence of technical excellence.

If you’ve built any of the following, we’d love to chat:

  • Your own AI agent harness or multi-agent workflow for complex tasks
  • Low latency network infrastructure and data pipelines serving millions of requests per second
  • Scalable and self-healing infrastructure with 1000s of compute workers spinning up and down with variable demand
  • High frequency trading systems

Or anything that you believe reflects high calibre of engineering design and low-level systems understanding.

You’re a good fit if you:

  • Care about your craft and operate ethically
  • Take extreme ownership of outcomes
  • Like to operate independently
  • Ship extremely fast and effectively use AI to accelerate your impact
  • Want to operate in a fun and social work environment

Apply and you’ll hear back in less than a day.

Source: Pear Vc careers (Ashby)

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