Founding Head of Engineering (San Francisco)

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Location: San Mateo, CA (Hybrid; 3+ days on-site)

Type: Full-time

We power the builders behind every brandan AI Revenue OS helping lean DTC teams grow smarter and faster. Cross-channel campaign planning and execution done for you.

About Marklo

Marklo is the AI Revenue OS for modern commerce. We help lean DTC brands drive profitable growth through intelligent campaign planning and execution. From SKU-level margin insights to one-click, cross-channel go-livesour platform replaces chaotic spreadsheets and disconnected tools with a single intelligent system.

Our first productthe Smart Revenue Calendaris the marketers control tower: an AI-native planner that tells brands what to run, when to run it, and how to launch itautomatically.

Weve raised capital from top VCs, and our founder, Jessica Herrin, has built multiple $100M+ companies empowering independent business owners and built enterprise software (Stella & Dot, WeddingChannel.com).

Why This Role Matters

We're looking for a Founding Head of Engineering who will define and deliver the architecture, infrastructure, and agentic capabilities behind our AI OS.

Youll be responsible for building a composable, modular, and scalable platform that:

• Turns LLM reasoning into revenue-driving suggestions
• Interfaces deeply with commerce APIs like Shopify, Klaviyo, and Meta
• Enables real-time campaign generation and execution across channels
• Powers a user-facing experience thats fast, explainable, and deeply human

This is a rare opportunity to own the entire technical stack and help shape a product and company that sits at the convergence of AI, commerce, and enterprise-grade automation.

Success in your first 612 months looks like:

• Shipping our v1 Smart Revenue Calendar with agentic AI campaign suggestions
• Delivering live Shopify/Klaviyo/Meta integrations with AI Chat based campaign generation that is highly useful and delivers quick TTV for a range of customers
• Building the MVP yourself, while also managing a small initial engineering team and formalizing core infrastructure decisions
• Building a system thats performant, modular, and observability-friendly from Day 1

What Youll Own

• Architecture & Infrastructure: Lead design of a scalable, modular platform with event-driven and agent-first architecture
• AI & LLM Integration: Implement workflows that leverage LLMs for planning, segmentation, and execution logic
• ML-Powered Learning Systems: Build and scale our hindsight engine a core ML loop that captures campaign metadata, performance, and creative attributes to improve future recommendations and personalization.
• Commerce API Ecosystem: Integrate deeply with Shopify, Klaviyo, Postscript, Attentive, etc.
• Agentic Interfaces: Own how tasks move from AI generation to user interface to 1-click execution and insight feedback loops
• DevOps & Observability: Build lightweight CI/CD and debugging workflows, including monitoring of LLM behavior and output quality
• Hiring & Team Leadership: Hire and mentor founding engineers while establishing a strong technical culture
• Security & Data Ownership: Design systems that respect sensitive brand and customer data, with flexibility for multi-tenant deployment

What Were Looking For

Were looking for a tenacious entrepreneur who is passionate about the mission, pragmatic builder who thrives in ambiguity, ships quickly, and believes in the power of great infrastructure to unlock product velocity.

• 8+ years of engineering experience, with recent senior IC or Head of Eng-level ownership
• Proven ability to design and build SaaS systems from the ground up (01)
• Deep experience with Python or Node.js for backend + TypeScript for client work
• Experience integrating with commerce platforms via APIs or SDKs
• Strong understanding of LLM frameworks (LangChain, semantic search, vector stores, prompt engineering)
• Practical experience building and shipping ML systems (e.g., classification, ranking, or recommendation models), not just LLM applications
• Strong understanding of supervised learning workflows, offline training vs online learning, and how to productionize ML insights in a live product
• Familiarity with AI observability and trust tooling (e.g., logging, scoring, overrides)
• Startup-minded: bias for speed, comfort with ambiguity, and deep ownership mindset. You must be a hands-on builder.

Why Join Us

• Founding-level impact and equity
• Direct partnership with a seasoned founder and visionary product team
• Ownership of architecture and tech culture from the beginning
• Backed by top-tier investors with deep conviction in our mission
• Build something that empowers thousands of modern brands to grow with clarity

Applicants must be authorized to work in the U.S. We are not currently able to sponsor employment visas. You must also live in the Bay Area. We are not currently able to relocate or to accomodate infrequent or off hour commuting.

Marklo is an Equal Opportunity Employer and is committed to diversity and inclusion at every level of our company. We encourage individuals of all backgrounds to apply.

Seniority level

• Seniority level

  Executive

Employment type

• Employment type

  Full-time

Job function

• Job function

  Engineering and Information Technology

• Industries

  Technology, Information and Internet

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