Senior Founding Engineer (INDIA)

Vulcury is a venture studio building a portfolio of companies anchored by proprietary AI and data infrastructure. Our two lead ventures are Trustbridge, a manufacturing and supply chain matchmaking platform, and Calisade, an investment research and asset management venture with a strong performance track record. We are backed by a committed lead investor and operate with a small, deliberately senior team.

The Role

We are hiring a founding engineer to lead the technical build of our first production product — a Trustbridge supplier matching application — and to grow into a senior technical anchor across the studio over time. This is a full-time, permanent role, not a contract or a project hire. We are looking for someone who wants a long-horizon seat at a company in formation.

You will report to the founder, with technical oversight and architecture support from our Fractional CTO (background in major financial technology). You will lead and grow our existing team of junior engineers and interns based in India.

What You Will Work On

In the near term, your work centers on the Trustbridge supplier app: model selection, agent and matching logic, the data and inference layer, the API surface, and the production infrastructure that gets it in front of real users. The product is a discovery instrument — real supplier usage will tell us what to build next, and you will be the person turning that signal into the next iteration.

Over a longer horizon, the work expands. The studio is building a cross-portfolio data and AI infrastructure that connects Trustbridge, Calisade, and future ventures. As the wedge product matures, you will help shape that infrastructure and take on technical leadership of work in adjacent domains — applied ML on the Calisade side, the cross-portfolio semantic layer, and external client engagements in our AI implementation practice.

We are not hiring for a fixed scope. We are hiring someone we expect to redeploy across multiple problem areas as the portfolio grows.

Who You Are

• 7–12 years of professional software engineering experience, with meaningful depth in applied ML, AI systems, or modern data infrastructure. We are not looking for a specialist in any single sub-discipline — we are looking for a senior generalist with real production chops.
  

• You have shipped a production system end-to-end. Not a prototype, not a research artifact. You can talk concretely about what broke, what you learned, and what you would do differently.
  

• You are comfortable across the stack you would touch in this role: model and agent design, data modeling and pipelines, backend services, and the production infrastructure that holds it all together. You do not need to be the world expert in all of these. You do need to be competent across most of them and have a clear opinion about where your center of gravity sits.
  

• You have led junior engineers before. You know how to set a technical bar without micromanaging, and you know how to grow people.
  

• You write clearly — code, design docs, decisions, and the occasional message to a non-technical founder who needs to understand the tradeoffs.
  

• You are comfortable with ambiguity. Requirements will evolve as real users start using what you build, and you need to find that energizing rather than frustrating.
  

• You want to build something that lasts. You are looking for a long-horizon seat at a company in formation, not a resume line.
  

Nice to Have

• Experience with dbt, modern data warehouse design, or feature stores.
  

• Background in supply chain, manufacturing, financial services, or investment data.
  

• Prior experience as a founding or early engineer at a venture-backed startup.
  

• Experience working across time zones with US-based founders or clients.
  

Location and Working Style

Remote, based in India — preference for Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune, or Chennai for occasional in-person collaboration. We work with a 3–4 hour daily overlap window with US Pacific time, primarily for design reviews and founder syncs. The rest of the day is yours for focused build work.

Compensation

Competitive base salary calibrated to senior engineering roles at top-tier Indian technology companies and well-funded startups, plus meaningful equity in Vulcury Ventures LLC. Equity vests over four years with a one-year cliff. Specific numbers will be discussed with shortlisted candidates.