Founding Engineer & Manager - Full Stack Agentic Application

Senior Founding Engineering Manager Full Stack (Agentic AI Systems)

Location: Bangalore (In-office)

Experience: 6+ years

Compensation: ?30 LPA fixed + meaningful ESOPs

About Zippy

Zippy is building Indias first screen-free AI companion for kids a hardware + AI ecosystem that blends physical play, storytelling, and agentic intelligence. We are a seed-stage startup backed by 4 VCs, building a long-term category-defining global product & company out of Bangalore, at the intersection of AI, hardware, and childrens media.

We are looking for a Senior Founding Engineering Manager who is deeply hands-on and excited to build agentic AI application systems from scratch. This is not a role for someone optimizing for short-term salary. This is for someone who wants to build, own, and grow into a long-term engineering leadership position.

Role Overview

For the first 12 months, this is a hands-on coding role. You will architect and build our full-stack agentic AI systems yourself, laying the technical foundation of the company. Over the next 12 years, as we hire more developers, you will gradually transition into an Engineering Manager role leading the team you help build.

This is a founding-level role with strong ownership, high responsibility, and real ESOP upside.

What You Will Do (First 12 Months Hands-On Phase)

• Architect and build full-stack agentic AI applications from scratch
• Develop backend systems using Node.js
• Build scalable APIs and services for AI-driven workflows
• Work on frontend systems using MERN stack (React.js + related ecosystem)
• Build and integrate Python-based agentic workflows, LLM orchestration, and AI pipelines
  
• Design system architecture for scale, reliability, and modularity
• Work closely with product, AI, firmware, and hardware teams
• Own deployment pipelines, monitoring, and production stability

What You Will Do (1224 Months Leadership Phase)

• Hire and mentor full-stack and backend engineers
• Establish engineering culture, code quality standards, and review systems
• Define architecture strategy and long-term technical roadmap
• Manage sprint planning, delivery timelines, and technical prioritization
• Transition from IC-heavy role to Engineering Manager as team scales

Must-Have Skills

• 6+ years of professional software development experience
• Strong hands-on expertise in Node.js backend development
• Strong frontend experience with React (MERN stack)
• Solid Python skills, especially for AI/LLM workflows and agentic systems
• Experience building scalable production-grade systems
• Strong system design and architecture fundamentals

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• Comfortable working in ambiguity and building from 0 to 1

Good to Have

• Experience with LLMs, agent frameworks, orchestration layers
• Experience with real-time systems, streaming, or event-driven architectures
• Experience in startup environments (01 or 110 stage)
• Exposure to cloud infra (AWS/GCP), CI/CD, DevOps

Compensation and Growth

• ?30 LPA fixed salary
• Meaningful ESOPs aligned with founding-level impact
• Strong salary progression based on performance
• Role progression into Engineering Manager / Head of Engineering as company scales

Important

This role is Bangalore-based and in-office.

We are a seed-stage startup. If you are primarily optimizing for salary security or brand name, this role may not be the right fit.

If you are excited about building agentic AI systems from scratch, owning architecture decisions, and growing into a long-term engineering leader while creating category-defining products, we would love to speak with you.