Founding Engineer

About the role

About GUILD

GUILD is building the Amazon for defense manufacturing. We're an AI-native defense prime: we win government contracts, route production across our network of vetted US factories, handle compliance, and deliver straight to the government's door.

Lockheed, Boeing, RTX and the rest of the primes are slow and expensive, and a broken procurement system protects them. Meanwhile the defense industrial base has shrunk 40%. The government pays too much, waits too long, and has nowhere else to go. We're here to beat the primes at their own game and fix how the government builds what the country needs.

The role

You'll be GUILD's first engineering hire. Both founders write code today, and you'll build alongside us and own major parts of the platform.

You won't be starting from a blank page. Our platform is already running on live DoD work, and your job is to make it faster, smarter, and more reliable every week.

This is not a software-only job. Some weeks you'll be improving the agents that parse government technical data packages. Other weeks you'll be on the factory floor running 3D printers, working with a CNC machine, or redesigning a fixture.

What you'll build and improve

- Technical data package ingestion: extend the agents that turn government drawings and specs into full bills of materials, raw material requirements, and compliance flowdowns

- Production routing: improve the systems that split work across our factory network to minimize cost and lead time

- The data layer: own and scale the database and pipelines that power the platform

- 3D printing factory operations: help run and automate our additive manufacturing operations, from print planning and machine utilization to quality control and throughput

- Hardware: CAD/CAM, CNC, and tooling as we build toward our own automated factory

Your first 90 days

- Week 1: Ship an improvement to our existing platform that's used on live DoD work.

- Month 1: Spend time in our 3D printing operations and with partner factories, find the biggest bottleneck in how parts get made and routed, and build the fix.

- Month 3: Own a major piece of the platform end to end and help shape our in-house manufacturing capability.

Must-haves

- US citizen (required for our defense work)

- 2-3+ years of engineering experience in industry

- Strong TypeScript and Python

- Deep database and SQL expertise. Schema design, query performance, and data modeling come naturally to you.

- AI-pilled. You build with LLMs every day and have hands-on experience with harness engineering, frontier model providers, and open-source models.

- Ready to get your hands dirty with hardware, 3D printing, and electrical and mechanical engineering

- In person in New York City, 4-5 days a week

Nice to have