Founding Software Engineer

Founding Software Engineer

Location: Riyadh, Saudi Arabia / Hybrid

Type: Full-time

Stage: Early-stage startup

Compensation: Equity + no salary initially

About Q4

Q4 is building the intelligence layer for financial markets in Saudi Arabia.

We are building a platform that brings together earnings calls, financial reports, company disclosures, market data, and AI-powered analysis into one place making it significantly easier for investors and financial professionals to understand companies and make better decisions.

We are at an early stage, which means you won't be joining an established engineering organization. You will be one of the people building the organization itself.

The Role

We are looking for a Founding Software Engineer to join Q4 full-time and take significant ownership of the technology behind the company.

This is not a role where you will simply receive tickets and implement specifications.

You will work directly with the founder to design, build, ship, iterate, and scale the product from the ground up.

You will have substantial influence over:

• Product architecture
• Engineering decisions
• Technology stack
• AI and data infrastructure
• Backend and frontend systems
• Product development
• Developer tooling and engineering practices
• Future engineering hiring

As a founding engineer, you will be expected to operate with a high degree of autonomy and take ownership beyond your individual technical responsibilities.

What You'll Build

Depending on your strengths and the company's priorities, you may work across:

• Full-stack web applications
• Financial data pipelines
• AI-powered search and retrieval
• Document processing and extraction
• RAG and LLM applications
• Vector search and embeddings
• APIs and backend infrastructure
• Data models and databases
• Real-time financial information systems
• Product analytics
• Cloud infrastructure and deployment

What We Are Looking ForTechnical

You should have strong software engineering fundamentals and be comfortable building production systems.

We are particularly interested in people who have experience with:

• TypeScript / JavaScript
• React
• Node.js
• PostgreSQL
• APIs and backend systems
• Cloud infrastructure
• Git and modern development workflows

Experience with any of the following is a strong plus:

• LLM applications
• RAG systems
• Embeddings and vector search
• AI agents
• Data engineering
• Financial technology
• Document intelligence
• Search and information retrieval

You do not need to be an expert in everything above.

We care much more about your ability to learn quickly, reason deeply, and build things yourself.

More Important Than Your Technical Stack

We are looking for someone who:

• Takes ownership rather than waiting for instructions
• Can turn ambiguous problems into working products
• Moves quickly without sacrificing engineering quality
• Is comfortable operating in uncertainty
• Thinks about the product, not just the code
• Has strong product intuition
• Can make pragmatic technical decisions
• Is willing to do whatever is necessary at an early-stage company
• Wants to build something significant, not simply have a job

You should be comfortable saying:

I don't know how to do this yet, but I'll figure it out.
Why Join as a Founding Engineer

Joining this early means you will have an opportunity that is very different from joining a later-stage startup.

You will have:

Ownership

You will own meaningful parts of the technology and product.

Influence

Your technical decisions will directly shape the company.

Equity

You will receive a meaningful equity stake in Q4, reflecting your role as a founding member of the company.

Learning

You will be exposed to product development, AI, financial markets, customers, fundraising, and company building not just engineering.

The opportunity to build from zero

You will help establish the technical foundation that the future engineering organization will build upon.

Compensation

This is a founding-stage position.

The initial compensation structure will primarily consist of equity in Q4, with no salary or a minimal salary initially, depending on the candidate and circumstances.

The goal is to align the founding team's incentives with the long-term success and value creation of the company.

As Q4 reaches revenue, funding, and other business milestones, the compensation structure will evolve accordingly.

The equity component will be discussed transparently with shortlisted candidates based on experience, commitment, and the level of responsibility they bring to the company.

This Role Is For You If...

You want to:

• Build rather than maintain
• Own rather than execute tickets
• Learn rather than stay within a narrow specialization
• Work directly with a founder
• Have meaningful equity in something you help build
• Take significant risk for significant potential upside
• Build technology that can become the foundation of a company

This Role Is Probably Not For You If...

You are primarily looking for:

• A predictable 9–5 role
• Market-rate salary from day one
• Clearly defined responsibilities
• A large engineering team
• Extensive processes and management layers
• Low-risk employment

That's completely fine — this is simply not that kind of role.

The Opportunity

We are looking for someone who wants to look back several years from now and say:

I was there when we built it.

If you are an exceptional engineer who wants to take a real shot at building a company from the ground up, we'd like to meet you.

• Apply to join Q4 as a Founding Software Engineer.