Quill — Founding Engineer

Type: Full-time | On-site | Manhattan, NY (5 days/week, relocation supported) Compensation: $160,000–$260,000 + 0%–1% equity Hiring count: 3 Visa sponsorship: Yes — H-1B, TN Reports to: Founders — Madhura (CEO & Founder) and Arvind (CTO)

About Quill

Quill is building an agent system for data reliability. Companies depend on systems of record like CRMs and ERPs to run sales, report, and manage the business, but the data inside those systems is messy at every company size — and in the age of AI, random tools and agents writing data everywhere are making it worse. Quill restructures and links that data into a company graph that agents can operate on reliably, then runs an agent system to clean data autonomously and provide governed, secure, human-in-the-loop curation workflows. It positions itself as serving security-conscious companies and regulated industries, with control, auditability, and compliance built in.

Founded: 2026 | Team size: 1–10 (pre-seed) | Total funding: $4.5M pre-seed Industry: AI tools / data infrastructure Website: tryquill.com Office: New York City (Manhattan)

Why Candidates Should Join

• Real traction, not just an idea: Design partners are already using the platform daily, and the team just closed $4.5M in pre-seed.
• Founding-engineer ownership: One of the first engineering hires, working directly with the founders on product vision and shipping end-to-end.
• Strong fundamentals for an early-stage shop: 99%+ employer-paid medical/dental/vision, 401k with 4% match, 20 days PTO, and meal stipends.

Intake Call Summary

• No intake transcript was available on the role page — the intake is provided as a video only. Summary to be added if/when a transcript or notes are supplied.

The Role

A high-ownership founding engineer role working directly with the founders on product vision and implementation, as one of the first engineering hires at a company with real, daily-active design partners. Primary responsibility is building the product, which right now means talking directly to customers, understanding their needs, building around those problems, and iterating on feedback — product-driven engineering where customer obsession and execution velocity drive growth.

What You'll Be Doing

• Own end-to-end product development, from design through production, shipping features that directly solve customer problems
• Talk directly to design partners to understand their data challenges, document requirements, and validate solutions
• Build core infrastructure and backend systems that power the agent system and data-reliability platform
• Design and implement the data restructuring and linking logic that creates the company graph agents operate on
• Iterate rapidly on customer feedback, monitoring usage patterns and adjusting the roadmap
• Ship production code with high standards for reliability and correctness; the system handles sensitive business data

Tech stack: Not specified on the role page (backend-leaning; involves data pipelines, agent systems, and the data-linking "company graph").

Requirements

• 1-5 years or exceptional new grads from top schools
• AI-native, daily Cursor or Claude user
• Full-stack leaning backend, shipped production code
• Customer-facing, ship features based on design-partner feedback
• NYC in-person 5 days, relocation supported, H-1B and TN visa open

Green Flags

• Founder or founding engineer experience
• Attended a top school and clearly learned a lot in your first role
• Strong career growth and intentional about pre-seed
• Side projects and personal shipping
• Can clearly articulate why pre-seed appeals to you

Red Flags

• Heavy job hopper with no good reason
• Spray-and-pray candidate applying to everything from pre-seed through Series C
• Only big tech (FAANG) experience with no startup exposure
• Not willing to be in-person in Manhattan 5 days a week

Role Details

Salary$160,000–$260,000Equity0%–1%On-site policyOn-site, Manhattan NY, 5 days/week; relocation supportedVisa sponsorshipH-1B, TNEmployment typeFull-timeLocationManhattan, NY

Screening Questions

None present on the role page.

Interview Process

Stage 1 — Pending Approval — Candidates awaiting initial approval. Stage 2 — Intro call with Madhura (CEO & Founder) — Understand your motivation, what drew you to the role, current situation, and get founder context on Quill. Stage 3 — Technical interview with Arvind (CTO) (1 hour) — Walk through a project in detail (architecture, problem-solving), then a product and system design exercise. Stage 4 — Cultural fit interview with Madhura — Deeper conversation on motivations, alignment with founding-team values, and genuine excitement about building the company. Stage 5 — 2-day work trial (in-person) — Work on real problems with the team; can be split across weekends or before/after hours if needed. Stage 6 — Offer Extended Stage 7 — Candidate Hired — Candidate accepts and starts.

Ideal Companies & Backgrounds

Updated June 24, 2026 High-bar product & infra companies — Palantir Technologies, Scale AI, Stripe, Notion, Figma, Robinhood Markets, Airtable, Rippling, Sierra

Supplementary from the role body — strong "nice-to-have" signals: undergrad from a top-20 US university or Waterloo; founder / founding-engineer background; side projects shipped to real users; experience with data pipelines, systems design, or scale.

Ideal Candidate Profiles

For reference only — do not source these specific profiles. Contrario marks these "DO NOT CONTACT." Kyle Seto — LinkedIn URL not captured on page Ryunosuke Saito — LinkedIn URL not captured on page David Yang — LinkedIn URL not captured on page Justin Lu — LinkedIn URL not captured on page Colin King — LinkedIn URL not captured on page

Rejected Candidate Feedback

• None present on the role page.