Founding Engineer
New York, NY$120k - $160k + equityFull-timePosted 8mo ago
About the role
Founding Engineer role at Cardinal Gray, a YC-backed fintech startup focused on automating lenders' interactions with the DMV. On-site in New York City, reporting to founders, with responsibilities spanning product development, customer engagement, and operational leadership.
Responsibilities
- Own integrations with lenders, vendors, and state-specific processes (often inconsistent and hostile to automation)
- Debug and harden systems that deal with messy inputs: OCR outputs, missing data, DMV rejection loops, inconsistent county requirements
- Work directly with customers: gather requirements, explain workflows, manage pilots, and turn adoption into expansion
- Support live operations when needed
- Help design the product by being close to the pain: rejections, backlog, chase cycles, etc.
- Write code that directly impacts revenue and customer retention
- Communicate confidently with collateral teams, ops teams, and decision-makers
- Be a “founder energy” operator: see problems, fix problems, close problems
Qualifications
- Strong computer science fundamentals and engineering judgment
- Real backend experience (TypeScript / Node preferred; AWS + cloud workflows a plus)
- High ownership
- Ability to communicate clearly with customers and translate pain into product
- Entrepreneurial temperament: you like chaotic problems and moving fast
Skills
Required:AWSHTMLJavaScriptTypeScript
Nice to have:ReactSoftware ArchitecturePrompt Engineering
Benefits
- Not specified in description
Last updated Jul 22, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.
About Cardinal Gray
Automating lenders' interactions with the DMV
When a lender gives out a car loan, they need to file a lien with their borrower’s DMV. This is difficult because the process varies by state and county. We’ve leveraged LLMs to help lenders automate lien filings for over $500M of loans.
enterprise-softwareconsumer-financeautomationaiautomotive