Founding Engineer
US$200,000 – US$240,000 / yr base salary
Posted 30 Sep 2026
Advertised as “Founding Engineer, Consumer Apps”
BranchFactor Summary
The original posting with the fluff stripped out
- Expected experience
- 6+ yrs
- Management level
- People management
- Employment
- Remote
| Base salary | US$200,000 – US$240,000 / yr |
|---|
Field of studyComputer Science (or related)
Study levelBachelor's
ABOUT PLACER.AI:
Placer.ai is transforming how organizations understand the physical world. Our location analytics platform provides unprecedented visibility into locations, markets, and consumer behavior. Placer empowers thousands of customers—from Fortune 500 companies, to local governments and nonprofits— to make smarter, data-driven decisions.
What sets us apart? We've built the most advanced location intelligence platform in the market while maintaining an uncompromising commitment to privacy, proving that powerful analytics and responsible data practices can coexist.
Our growth reflects the market's demand: we reached $100M in annual recurring revenue within just 6 years of launching, achieved unicorn status with a $1B+ valuation in 2022, and continue to expand rapidly as one of North America's fastest-growing tech companies. We're creating a $100B+ market opportunity, and we're just getting started.
Named one of Forbes America's Best Startup Employers and a Deloitte Technology Fast 500 company, we're building a culture where innovation thrives, collaboration is the norm, and every team member contributes to reshaping how the world understands location.
SUMMARY:
The Founding Engineer, Consumer Apps is the first engineer on Placer's new B2C team. Placer's core business sells to companies. This team builds products for consumers directly: apps whose users choose to contribute the data behind the Placer platform. The role works directly with the Vice President, Consumer Apps. It owns the technical product end to end: the mobile apps and the experience inside them, the backend behind them, the permission and consent flow, and the integration that brings what users contribute into the Placer platform.
The team is small and lean by design, gets its speed from AI tools, and runs on move fast, fail fast: ship small, measure honestly, and quickly either drop an idea or double down on it. The Founding Engineer takes the product from first prototype to launch and scale, and sets the technical foundation the team builds on as it grows.
RESPONSIBILITIES:
- Architect, build and ship Placer's first consumer apps on Android and iOS, plus the backend services behind them, as the team's first engineer, on an architecture that can scale to millions of users.
- Own the quality of the consumer experience: onboarding, the permission ask, the core engagement loop and every screen in between. Treat each step as a place a user can drop off, work hands-on from mockups to polished UI, and use funnel data and user feedback to decide what to fix next.
- Build the permission and consent flow to App Store and Google Play policy, in partnership with Legal and Privacy. This covers prominent disclosure, the grant from foreground to background location, and every step of the grant funnel.