About the role
Founding Engineer – Lava (NYC)
About Lava: Be on the ground floor of how the world builds and monetizes AI.
AI is driving a fundamental shift in software economics.
Legacy SaaS models were built for humans and per-seat licenses. But this starts falling apart in an AI world: for the first time, software costs are intimately tied to usage rather than seats, and soon, it will be agents, not humans, driving the majority of transactions. The rails to support this AI-native economy don't exist yet.
Lava is building them.
We're creating the universal payments and data infrastructure layer for the AI internet, enabling developers to monetize seamlessly and both people and agents to transact frictionlessly across any service.
Our mission is to make it effortless for people and AI to work together, starting with the ability to pay and get paid. We’re looking for an early engineering hire to help define how and what we build.
What You’ll Do
- Work on cutting-edge problems at the intersection of AI, payments, and infrastructure
- Build integrations with AI providers, payment systems, and developer tools
- Collaborate closely with the founder, product, and sales to set the technical direction and architecture
- Join sales development calls when needed, acting as a forward-deployed engineer who can bridge tech and customer needs
- Move fast, adapt to ambiguity, and help shape the culture and processes from day one
What We’re Looking For
- Driven, resourceful, and self-motivated, thriving in open-ended, fast-changing environments
