---
title: 'Founding Engineer at empathic.so'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/founding-engineer-empathic-so-san-francisco-j71jzfqrw7rb'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-12'
---

# Founding Engineer at empathic.so

- **Company:** empathic.so
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2025-12-16
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-12
- **Apply:** https://jobs.gem.com/empathic/am9icG9zdDouCrG3HRSBIhdZ0DZDxwlH

## Job description

tl;dr: This is a 1 of 1 role. We're looking for a founding engineer to work alongside a Thiel Fellow founder as employee #1 - with 5X more equity than most "founding engineers"

## About Empathic

“…but I tell you all today, I would rather die a man than live for all eternity a machine.” -Bicentennial Man (Asimov, 1976)

The world is trending towards fewer, shallower friendships, meaning more lonely people and less social contact than ever before. Empathic is creating a great friend for everyone on Earth, by digitizing connection, in what we think could be the biggest cultural transition of our lifetime.

Most AI “conversation” today is a robotic, sterile, turn-based interface. We’re building towards a realistic real-time video call medium where AI can be present and proactive, to connect with users. Users will connect not on a new destination, but the iMessage, Facetime, and other native apps they already love.

We've raised $2.7M led by BoxGroup and the founder is a Thiel Fellow, YC alum, Stanford dropout who recently sold his last company. We intend to build a engineering-first organization of the highest quality, fully in-person in San Francisco. Think a room full of only the smartest people you've met, doing the best work of your life.

## Who you are

- 3+ years experience, excluding internships, with 1+ year senior responsibilities
- You use AI gen to move faster in all aspects of development, but you developed deep technical taste before, with strong opinions on systems, code quality, and the craft of software development.
- Proficiency in one or more backend languages (e.g., Python, Go, Rust, Typescript or similar) and distributed systems concepts, work with databases, etc. You've built apps full stack.
- Frontend proficiency and design taste is a massive plus.
- You are excited about working at the earliest stage! Former founder, or early engineer at a startup who has built a product from scratch is a plus
- Proven ability to thrive in fast-growing, product-driven companies by effectively navigating loosely defined tasks and managing competing priorities.

## What you’ll do

- Shape the next generation of human-AI interaction with our founder, design, and other engineers.
- Build new systems for memory, retrieval, proactivity, responsiveness, and more
- Work on and integrate the latest internal and external real-time video generation and audio synthesis models
- Build user facing interfaces and features
- Create the bar for engineering quality and help recruit world-class talent.
- Report directly to the founder: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike21/

Interview process Our interview process is simple, and we can go start to finish in less than one week at fastest:

- 20-minute screening call
- 2 technical interviews
- Onsite
- Offer

We always perform reference checks.

## Benefits

- Extremely generous equity ownership
- Generous medical/dental/vision, covering most Gold and Platinum plans (via employer ICHRA)
- Free lunch and dinner every day
- Monthly bonus if you live or move close to the office
- 401k plus match
- Obvious things (work computer, things you need to get things done)

## About empathic.so

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Empathic is building an AI-native iMessage companion that enables real-time, human-like video conversations with AI, native in FaceTime.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Seed stage; raised $2.7M)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, CA, USA
- **Founded**: Not publicly available (likely 2024–2025 based on funding and job posting date)
- **Founders**: Michael Lee (Thiel Fellow, YC alum, third-time founder)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Consumer AI / Conversational AI
- **Target customers**: B2C – individuals seeking a digital companion with real-time voice and video interaction
- **Mission/purpose**: Steward the transition of humanity forming social relationships with digital intelligence, creating a friend who is always there for any human on earth.

## Products & Services
- **[Empathic AI Companion]**: A real-time, native FaceTime-integrated AI that can see, hear, and converse with users. The product focuses on presence and connection through realistic, low-latency video generation. Type: Consumer AI application (SaaS-like subscription? Not specified but likely paid).

## Market Standing
- **Valuation**: $30M (post-money, per job posting)
- **Key Metric**: Total funding raised – $2.7M (led by BoxGroup)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: BoxGroup (lead), Thiel Capital (talent source mentioned on LinkedIn)
- **Growth Signals**:
  - 130 paying customers (as of job posting date, ~mid-2025)
  - 80%+ day-one retention, 70%+ week-two retention
  - High retention indicates strong product-market fit in early stage

## Competitive Advantages
- **Real-time, native FaceTime integration** – not a separate app, leverages Apple’s ecosystem
- **Low-latency video generation** – focuses on expressive, real-time interaction rather than text-based chatbots
- **Founder pedigree** – Thiel Fellow, YC alum, third-time founder with experience building hard tech
- **Long-term vision** – company states a decades-long time horizon, aiming to define a new medium for AI conversations

## Strategic Focus
- **Current priorities**: Improving memory systems, latency, and information compression; building recommendation and content delivery systems; shipping real-time voice and AI interaction experiences.
- **Direction**: Scaling the engineering team (hiring founding engineer), expanding the product beyond early adopters, and refining the underlying AI models for video generation.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: High-intensity, in-person startup environment in San Francisco (9-to-6 minimum). Emphasis on exceptional builders who can own full stack, from backend to ML to frontend.
- **Remote/hybrid policy**: On-site only (San Francisco).
- **Perks & engineering culture**:
  - Founding engineer role with 1%–6% equity
  - Compensation $175k–$250k (per job posting)
  - Opportunity to set engineering standards and recruit future hires
  - Work on cutting-edge real-time systems, low-latency video models, and distributed systems
  - “Hard company” with a mission-driven, long-term outlook

## Sources
1. [empathic.so](https://www.empathic.so/)
2. [empathic.so/ethos](https://www.empathic.so/ethos)
3. [linkedin.com/company/empathichq](https://linkedin.com/company/empathichq)
4. [wearedevelopers.com](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/jobs/ext/492233-founding-engineer-empathic)
5. [weloveaijobs.com](https://weloveaijobs.com/companies/empathic)

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