Founding Engineer
Founding Engineer
Terac: The Expert Network Powering Frontier Research
Location: San Francisco (in-person required) | Stage: Seed ($9M raised)
From Terac’s inception, we’ve been fascinated by a single idea: as agent-run companies emerge, they won’t need employees, but they will still need people. Today, humans do most of the world’s work with the help of AI. In a not so distant future, AI will do most work with the help of humans. Terac is the labor marketplace that will power this post-AGI future.
Today, we are an expert network powering frontier research by building the infrastructure layer that makes human labor accessible on-demand. Companies integrate with us via API to access our wide array of research-grade experts. We handle sourcing, verification, screening, and payouts so our partners can focus on building their products.
Over the course of human history jobs have only become shorter and shorter term. In the stone age, you hunted or gathered your whole life. In the industrial era, you worked at one factory for 30 years. Now, on platforms like Uber, people take on dozens of micro-jobs per day. We believe this trend will continue and the need for AI-driven labor marketplaces will only grow.
We've raised $9M from Emergence, SignalFire, Audacious, and Z Fellows. We're looking for founder-mindset engineers to own major parts of the platform as we scale from research tooling into the broader human data economy.
You will:
Own and scale the recruitment engine, the algorithm that finds any niche audience in the world through network traversal targeted ads, referrals, automated outbound, and anything else you can come up with.
Build and extend the Terac API that research tooling companies and AI data companies integrate against.
Ship the AI moderator, our voice agent that screens candidates, evaluates long-horizon tasks, detects cheating, and handles multi-language conversations.
Build marketplace systems: opportunity routing, pricing optimization, expert LTV modeling, and feasibility estimation.
Design the expert network experience, including onboarding flows, opportunity matching, payouts, and trust systems that make experts want to stay on the platform.
Work directly with the CTO to shape technical direction across Next.js, TypeScript, tRPC, Drizzle, Neon Postgres, LiveKit, and the Vercel AI SDK.
You are:
A high-agency builder with 3+ years of fullstack experience.
Fluent in modern web stacks (TypeScript, React, Postgres).
Experienced with LLMs, voice AI, or AI SDKs (Vercel AI SDK, Gemini, LiveKit).
Excited by marketplace dynamics like matching, routing, pricing, and network effects.
Maybe a former founder or lead who's hungry to build again.
Why now:
We're at the inflection point, shifting from a research tool into a platform company with 10+ API integrations launching in the next quarter.
The human data market for AI training is exploding and we have the recruitment infrastructure already built.
You'd be joining a sub 10-person team with $9M in funding and a growing base of happy customers.
Join us early and help build the infrastructure layer between AI and human expertise.
Terac: The Expert Network Powering Frontier Research.