Founding Engineer
Noun · Hacker Culture
Definitions
One of the earliest engineers at a startup, often expected to do broad high-impact work across product, infrastructure, hiring, and process. In startup culture the role carries both high leverage and high chaos.
In plain English: An early engineer at a startup with broad responsibility.
Example: "As a founding engineer, she spent the same week designing the initial architecture, interviewing candidates, and fixing the billing bug threatening the first enterprise contract."