Porter — Founding Engineer

Type: Full-time | On-site | New York City, NY Compensation: $200,000–$270,000 + competitive equity Hiring count: 1 Visa sponsorship: Yes — H-1B, O-1, OPT Reports to: Not specified on the role page (Stage 2 of the process is "Intro with David")

About Porter

Porter is the cloud platform for modern tech companies — the power of the cloud without the complexity and cost, letting the next generation of builders run anything, anywhere. It lets top engineering teams instantly spin up production-grade infrastructure on any cloud provider (AWS, Azure, GCP), deploy their application code, and monitor and manage it, so they can focus on building product instead of managing infra or getting locked in. Series A, profitable, and growing 8x in ARR since 2022. HQ in New York with an SF office; flat team, high ownership, working with some of the most exciting YC-backed companies.

Founded: 2020 | Team size: 11–50 | Total funding: Series A (amount not stated) Industry: Tech for Tech (developer infrastructure / cloud) Website: porter.run Office: New York City (HQ), San Francisco

Why Candidates Should Join

• Real founding seat at a profitable Series A: High-ownership role at a company growing 8x YoY that is already profitable — rare for the stage.
• Deep infrastructure work: Build at every level of the cloud infrastructure stack, from architecture through production deployment and root-cause debugging.
• Autonomy from day one: 2-week project cycles with full autonomy to propose and drive your own work; direct customer contact via Slack; flat structure, direct access to leadership.
• Perks: 30 days PTO, 30 days remote per year, relocation covered.

Intake Call Summary

• Not available from the role page — the intake was provided as a video with no transcript. Request the intake summary/transcript from Contrario if it's needed for scoring.

The Role

Porter is hiring a Founding Engineer to build at every level of the cloud infrastructure stack — production software, customer-facing problem solving, and ownership of complex technical surfaces inside the platform.

What You'll Be Doing

• Write production-grade software that powers Porter's platform across cloud infrastructure surfaces
• Own the end-to-end development lifecycle, from architectural design through production deployment
• Debug at the deepest levels: shell into virtual machines, dig through log files, find root causes
• Read through open-source repositories to debug third-party dependencies
• Collaborate on anything that touches users' infrastructure and provide meaningful feedback
• Work in 2-week project cycles with full autonomy to propose and drive your own work
• Talk to customers directly via Slack and bring product intuition to infrastructure decisions

Tech stack: Cloud infrastructure (AWS, Azure, GCP), Kubernetes, distributed systems, networking

Requirements

• 5-8 years startup experience
• Founding engineer
• Founding engineer at ~2 startups
• Strong infra background OR exceptional generalist with infra excitement
• End-to-end ownership in production
• NYC in-person 5 days, relocation covered

Green Flags

• Founding engineer or earliest technical hire at a startup
• Hands-on infrastructure experience
• Shipped products at meaningful scale
• High slope; figures things out without a playbook

Red Flags

• Only big-tech infrastructure experience
• Cannot articulate why infrastructure excites you
• Perfectionist who optimizes for elegance over shipping
• Needs a defined scope, team structure, or process to operate

Role Details

Salary$200,000–$270,000EquityCompetitive (percentage not stated)On-site policy In-person NYC, 5 days/week; relocation covered Visa sponsorshipH-1B, O-1, OPT Employment type Full-time LocationNew York City, NY

Screening Questions

• None provided on the role page.

Interview Process

Stage 1 — Pending Approval — Candidates awaiting initial approval. Stage 2 — Intro with David — Introductory conversation. Stage 3 — Applied algorithms and data structures — Technical interview. Stage 4 — System design — System design interview. Stage 5 — Specialized coding discussion based on prior interview feedback — Targeted coding discussion. Stage 6 — On-Site Work Trial — On-site trial. Stage 7 — Offer ExtendedStage 8 — Candidate Hired — Candidate accepts and starts.