--- title: 'Founding Design Engineer at Dryft' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/founding-design-engineer-dryft-san-francisco-2bv5x5hqdz05' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-09-08' --- # Founding Design Engineer at Dryft - **Company:** Dryft - **Location:** San Francisco, CA - **Employment:** full-time - **Work type:** onsite - **Posted:** 2025-11-05 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-08 - **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/dryft/572fe2dc-1f15-476e-9e1b-df60ddd3205d ## Job description ## DRYFT Dryft builds intelligent systems that automate complex human decisions in manufacturing operations We’re a small, talent-dense team with modest roots and a love for the physical world - cars, machines, planes. Our team includes graduates from Stanford, Berkeley, CDTM, TUM, winners of Stanford TreeHacks, recipients of Fulbright & Haniel scholarships, and builders of everything from robots and race cars to software with millions of downloads. We’re backed by the founders and leaders behind Amazon, Facebook, Stripe, Applied Intuition, & others; General Catalyst & Neo, and board members of global industrial companies. Today, we’re already saving customers millions. But this is only the beginning. ERPs ran the physical world for half a century. Dryft is powering the next. ## THE ROLE As Founding Design Engineer, you’ll work directly with our CEO, CTO, and customers to build magical user interfaces for our AI Agents. Your mission is to make the complex intuitive, transforming dense industrial data and decision logic into transparent, high-trust experiences that empower users to act with confidence and speed. YOU - Are an engineer turned designer, or vice versa, or always have been the one on the team understanding the value of easy-to-use interfaces. - Shipped production features end-to-end. While stronger in FE, you can handle BE too. - Have a strong product sense and enjoy working directly with customers - You obsess over design, pay attention to details and are always the first to explore best-in-class products - Are ready to work onsite in SF (we support relocation & visa) ## TECH STACK - FE (TypeScript): React, Chakra UI v3, TanStack Router, TanStack Query, Vite - BE (Python): FastAPI with Pydantic v2, SQLModel, PostgreSQL with pgvector, dagster - AI: Pydantic AI, Langfuse ## About Dryft ## Company Overview - **One-liner**: Dryft builds artificial intelligence that mimics, optimizes, and automates complex human decisions in manufacturing operations, essentially building the next generation of ERP systems. - **Entity Type**: Private (Seed stage, $5M total funding) - **Headquarters**: Palo Alto, California, United States (with presence in Germany and Greece) - **Founded**: 2024 - **Founders**: Anna-Julia Storch (CEO) and Leonie Freisinger (CTO) ## Core Business - **Primary industry/industries**: AI for manufacturing operations; industrial software. - **Target customers**: B2B – manufacturing companies (SMB to enterprise). - **Mission or purpose statement**: "We combine agent-based intelligence with mathematical optimization to build what comes after ERPs: systems that think, act, and adapt autonomously across manufacturing operations." ## Products & Services - **Dryft AI Platform**: An AI-powered system that uses agents and mathematical optimization to autonomously handle complex manufacturing decisions such as supplier follow-ups, inventory management, safety stock adjustments, and late-item alerts. It integrates with existing data (inventory, orders) and acts as an autonomous co-pilot for manufacturing operations. ## Market Standing - **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not disclosed (private company). - **Key Metric**: Total Funding – $5.0M (Seed round, November 2025). - **Notable Investors/Partners**: Led by General Catalyst; investors include Ali Partovi (founder, Neo; co-founder Code.org), Jeannette zu Fürstenberg (Managing Director, General Catalyst), Jeff Wilke (former CEO Amazon Consumer), Steve Blank, Claire Hughes Johnson, and others. - **Growth Signals**: - Headcount grew from ~1 to 12 in a year (+1,100% YoY). - Active job postings for 4 open positions (Founding Forward Deployed Engineer, Full-Stack Engineering Intern, Founding Full-Stack Engineer, Founding Design Engineer). - Monthly website visits ~9,475 (73% US, 27% Germany). - Team members span three countries and backgrounds from Stanford, MIT, Porsche, and manufacturing companies. ## Competitive Advantages - **AI + Mathematical Optimization**: Dryft uniquely combines agent-based AI with traditional optimization (operations research), creating a hybrid that can both learn and mathematically guarantee good decisions. - **Deep Manufacturing Domain Expertise**: Founders and team have hands-on experience in manufacturing (Leonie worked on Porsche Taycan predictive controllers; Anna-Julia worked with Siemens' AI Lab on the “factory of the future”). - **Founder-Market Fit**: Both founders are technical (MS in Data Science from Stanford) and have spent thousands of hours with manufacturers co-developing the product. - **Backed by Top-Tier Investors**: General Catalyst and a roster of prominent individuals (Ali Partovi, Jeff Wilke) signal strong confidence. ## Strategic Focus - **Replace legacy ERPs** with autonomous, AI-native systems for manufacturing. - **Hire a small, elite technical team** to build and deploy the first product version. - **Scale from manufacturing operations** to broader industrial decision-making. - **International presence**: Already has team members in Germany and Greece, suggesting a pan-European talent strategy. ## Why Work Here - **Culture**: "All technical team" with a sense of urgency and taste for great products. Values include building everything from robots, PCBs, and race cars to software. - **Remote/Hybrid/Office**: Roles are listed as “San Francisco” – likely onsite but open to relocation support. - **Perks**: "We support Visa & Relocation" – actively hiring international talent. - **Engineering Culture**: Early‑stage startup (founded 2024) with opportunity to shape the product and architecture. Team includes people from physical intelligence, Stanford, MIT, and manufacturing backgrounds. - **Growth Opportunity**: Joining at “Day 0” – chance to be a founding engineer in a well-funded startup tackling a 50‑year‑old industry problem. ## Sources 1. [dryft.ai](https://dryft.ai/) 2. [dryft.ai/careers](https://dryft.ai/careers) 3. [LinkedIn - Dryft](https://www.linkedin.com/company/dryft-hq) 4. 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