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As a Founding Engineer, you'll architect and build the core AI agents and infrastructure that power precision outbound at scale — then make them accessible through beautiful, intuitive interfaces. You'll work directly with customers, shape product direction, and own critical systems that drive revenue for 40+ YC companies and growing.
Cardinal is the AI platform for precision outbound. "Spray and pray" outbound is dead — the best sales teams operate with extreme precision, but doing this well means stringing together 10+ tools and hiring a GTM engineer. Cardinal replaces all of that. Our AI agents find hyper-targeted leads, continuously monitor what prospects are posting on social media, generate personalized snippets based on shared context, and orchestrate end-to-end outbound workflows across email and LinkedIn. We also capture inbound from website visitors, product signups, and ad impressions — qualifying and routing them into sequences automatically. We run outbound for 40+ YC companies including Mintlify, Greptile, and Luminai, and we're growing fast.
Co-founders Devi and Jianna are 2x YC founders (S23, W26) and Harvard/MIT CS alums. Devi is Harvard CS dropout, and Prod alum. Jianna is an MIT CS alum, and Prod alum. Formerly software engineer at DoorDash, Nvidia, and Meta. Their last company, Leafpress sold to Johnson Controls (NYSE: JCI), an $80B enterprise. Leafpress was an energy software company where they closed enterprise customers like Lindt and Honeywell from cold outbound. They know outbound because they've lived it.
We've raised over $5M from top investors including Y Combinator, Audacious Ventures, and other world-class operators and technologists.
Time to hire: 14 days
Hey YC! We're Devi and Jianna - the founders of Cardinal.
TL;DR: Cardinal is the AI platform for precision outbound. We run outbound for 40+ YC companies, like Mintlify, Greptile, and Luminai.
The Problem
“Spray and Pray” outbound is dead. The best teams at outbound do it with extreme precision. Finding things in common with your customers, staying in touch with them through their content, mapping inbound from signups and ads, tracking website visitors, monitoring various signals, etc. This sounds great in theory, but in reality involves stringing together 10+ tools and hiring a GTM engineer.
That’s where Cardinal comes in.
Cardinal is an AI platform for precision outbound. Our agents can create workflows that normally require the work of fulltime GTM engineers.
If you're a founder or sales leader looking to bring AI into your sales org, would love to chat!
Salary
$200,000 - $250,000
Equity
1% - 1%
Location
San Francisco, CA, US
Jianna Liu
CTO & Co-founder