How We Helped an AI Startup Hire Their First Engineer in 12 Days

Alona Groza
Jun 24
3 min read

Updated: 2 days ago

Hiring your first engineer shouldn't take 3 months. Here's how one founder did it in 12 days without guesswork, or budget waste.

Company snapshot

Startup: Stealth AI SaaS

Stage: Pre-seed, backed by two angels

Location: Remote-first team, founder based in Austin

Product: B2B fleet optimization using machine learning

Hiring challenge: First technical hire (Founding Engineer, Python/ML)

The problem: “I need to hire fast, but I can’t afford to get it wrong”

When Lucas (Founder) reached out, he had just closed his first $400k pre-seed round. He had the prototype, early pilot interest, and a clear product roadmap but zero tech background.

His words:

“I know what we’re solving. I know what the MVP needs to do. But I can’t tell if someone’s actually good or just good at talking.”

He’d already burned 6 weeks on:

Poorly defined job posts
Conversations with agency recruiters who didn’t get the stage
Freelancers who bailed after one sprint

What he needed: A founding engineer who could ship fast, think independently, and work with ambiguity.

The goal: Hire a product-minded engineer in under 2 weeks

We set a clear target:

🎯 One strong hire within 14 days ideally someone who’d stay through Series A.

Step 1: Rewrote the job as a story, not a list

We rebuilt the role around outcomes, not just tech stacks. Here’s how we positioned it:

Title: Founding Engineer (Python/ML)
Pitch: Build version 1 of a real-world AI product, fast
Key line: “We don’t care where you worked. We care how you think.”

Why it worked: This immediately filtered out code monkeys and attracted builders.

We also:

Removed all “years of experience” talk
Added real product tradeoffs to the description
Published on Wellfound, Hacker News, and our own shortlist of pre-vetted dev communities

Step 2: Built a 3-step, founder-friendly process

Time was tight. So we kept it simple:

Initial screen: Async answers to 3 practical questions (no resumes)
Live test: “If you had to ship MVP v1 in 4 weeks, what’s your plan?”
Founder call: One-on-one with Lucas to test chemistry and ownership

💡 Tools used:

Notion for role brief
Loom for async intro
Calendly for call automation
Google Docs for scorecards

Step 3: Evaluated mindset, not just code

One candidate stood out. She didn’t over-promise. She asked real questions. She mapped out an MVP timeline in 48 hours with realistic milestones, model decisions, and risks.

Lucas said:

“She didn’t pitch herself. She built trust by showing how she thinks.”

On Day 12, they signed her as their Founding Engineer.

Results: What changed after the hire

MVP shipped in 7 weeks
Pilot with 3 enterprise fleets launched 1 month later
Hired a second engineer via referral from the same candidate
Lucas stopped doing tech interviews and focused on customer development

Why founders relate to this case

If you’re asking yourself:

“How do I hire my first engineer without a tech background?”
“Should I look for a technical cofounder or a founding engineer?”
“What questions should I ask in the interview?”
“How do I know they’re actually good?”

This case answers all of that. Not in theory but in the way real founders move: with urgency, clarity, and limited room for error.

Because speed matters. But structure is what makes it stick.