Founding Engineer

at Cardinal Gray — Automating lenders' interactions with the DMV

New York, NY, USFull-time1+ years$120K - $160K0.50% - 2.00% equityYC-S23

What the role involves

This is a full-time, on-site role in New York City for someone who can build product and drive outcomes with customers.

This is not a role for someone who wants clean abstractions, perfect APIs, or slow roadmaps. You will ship production fixes, deploy automations, talk to operators, and help close deals — often in the same week.

What you’ll do:

Own integrations with lenders, vendors, and state-specific processes (often inconsistent and hostile to automation)

Debug and harden systems that deal with messy inputs: OCR outputs, missing data, DMV rejection loops, inconsistent county requirements

Work directly with customers: gather requirements, explain workflows, manage pilots, and turn adoption into expansion

Support live operations when needed

Help design the product by being close to the pain: rejections, backlog, chase cycles, etc.

You will be expected to

  • Write code that directly impacts revenue and customer retention
  • Communicate confidently with collateral teams, ops teams, and decision-makers
  • Be a “founder energy” operator: see problems, fix problems, close problems

You are a strong fit if you have

  • Strong computer science fundamentals and engineering judgment
  • Real backend experience (TypeScript / Node preferred; AWS + cloud workflows a plus)
  • High ownership
  • Ability to communicate clearly with customers and translate pain into product
  • Entrepreneurial temperament: you like chaotic problems and moving fast

Bonus (but not required)

  • Experience in fintech, lending, B2B SaaS, or compliance-heavy workflows
  • Sales instinct: you can tell what a customer actually needs vs. what they’re asking for
  • Experience working with large enterprise clients (pilots, rollouts, expansions)

What they ask for

Amazon Web Services (AWS)HTMLJavaScriptReactTypeScriptSoftware ArchitecturePrompt Engineering

About Cardinal Gray

When a lender gives out a car loan, they need to file a lien with their borrower’s DMV. This is difficult because the process varies by state and county. We’ve leveraged LLMs to help lenders automate lien filings for over $1B of loans.

Full Cardinal Gray profile

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