Cardinal — Founding Product Engineer

Type: Full-time | On-site | San Francisco, CA Compensation: $150,000–$275,000 + 0.5%–1.0% equity Hiring count: 1 Visa sponsorship: None available — US citizen or existing work visa required Reports to: Founders (Devi, Co-founder — no LinkedIn in source)

About Cardinal

Cardinal is the AI-native outbound sales platform replacing the SDR-and-GTM-engineer stack companies cobble together today with Apollo, Outreach, Clay, and a few engineers gluing it together. A YC W26 company, it has grown to $80K+ MRR in its first few months, with 50+ YC companies and a growing roster of post-Series A startups running outbound on the platform. Small, dense, design-obsessed team where the bar for engineering taste, product instinct, and aesthetic quality is very high.

Founded: 2025 | Team size: 1–10 (Pre-seed) | Total funding: $5M+ (Audacious, Burst Capital, YC) Industry: AI Tools Website: https://trycardinal.ai/ Office: San Francisco, CA Traction: $80K+ MRR; 50+ YC + post-Series A customers; targeting $10M ARR by mid-2026

Why Candidates Should Join

• Founding-level ownership: Work directly with the founders, ship to production every week, and have outsized influence on what the product becomes.
• Real traction, early: $80K+ MRR in the first few months, 50+ YC customers, $5M+ raised, targeting $10M ARR by mid-2026.
• Design-obsessed bar: "Linear-quality B2B SaaS" is the explicit standard — engineering taste on par with Linear, Attio, Raycast, Vercel.
• Comp + perks: $150K–$275K base, 0.5%–1.0% equity, free lunch/dinner, transport to and from the office, health insurance, laptop and equipment.

Intake Call Summary

No intake call transcript in source. An Intake Video is present on the role page but was not transcribed — section omitted rather than fabricated.

The Role

As a Founding Product Engineer, you'll own the surfaces customers (founders, GTM leaders, sales engineers) live in every day and make a system-of-action sitting on top of every GTM data source (CRMs, enrichment APIs, LinkedIn, intent signals, website visitor data) feel like one beautifully designed product rather than a plumbing project.

What You'll Be Doing

• Build the product surfaces customers use daily: the sequence and enrollment system (per-lead customization, multi-sender, conditional branching), the Cedar agent layer (embedded AI agents that draft, research, and enroll on the user's behalf), and eval/observability tooling
• Take products from 70 to 100 — ship features the existing engineer has built to 70% up to production-grade quality
• Sit directly in Slack with customers and translate their requests into product improvements
• Pair with the founders on what to build next, contributing as much product intuition as engineering work
• Help define what "Linear-quality B2B SaaS" feels like in Cardinal's category

Tech stack: Next.js, React, Python, FastAPI, Supabase

Requirements

• 0-4 years engineering, new grads OK
• DS / CS / IE / Operations background
• Customer-facing + technical communication
• Full-stack (Next.js, React, Python, Supabase)
• Product ops instinct
• SF in-person, 5 days a week

Green Flags

• DS/CS/IE background with customer-facing experience
• Prior founder, founding engineer, or first-3 hire at a YC-stage startup. Direct calibration with the role.
• Engineering taste demonstrated through shipped products at Linear, Attio, Raycast, Vercel, Notion, Figma, or comparable quality bar.
• Power user of GTM tools (Apollo, Outreach, Clay, Attio, HubSpot). Has actually run outbound, not just built features for sales teams.
• Strong school background paired with prior startup ownership signal.
• Public portfolio: shipped side projects, GitHub history showing fast iteration, technical writing on product engineering or AI agent UIs

Red Flags

• Pure backend or infrastructure engineer without product intuition or design taste.
• Big-co tenure without startup adaptation. Will struggle with the pace and ambiguity.
• Wants a spec handed to them. The role requires reading customer signals from Slack and converting them into product decisions.
• Requires visa sponsorship
• Cannot or will not work 5 days in person in SF.

Role Details

• Salary — $150,000–$275,000
• Equity — 0.5%–1.0%
• On-site policy — In-person, 5 days a week
• Visa sponsorship — None available (US citizen or existing work visa required)
• Employment type — Full-time
• Location — San Francisco, CA
• Benefits — Free lunch and dinner, Uber/transportation to and from office, health insurance, free laptop and equipment

Screening Questions

No Screening Questions section in source — none listed rather than fabricated.

Interview Process

Stage 1 — Pending Approval — Candidates awaiting initial approval. Stage 2 — Phone Screen with Devi (Co-founder) — Behavioral, product-instinct probe. Devi handles the first two phone screens. Stage 3 — Technical Assessment — Live technical evaluation. Stage 4 — Take-Home Assignment — Product-engineering exercise (e.g., implement a feature spec such as exporting data to spreadsheets, testing whether the candidate can innately understand what the user wants). Stage 5 — In-Person Visit (SF-local candidates) — Optional, depending on candidate location. Stage 6 — Offer Extended Stage 7 — Candidate Hired — Candidate accepts and starts.