Founding Head of Engineering — AI, Agents & Infrastructure (Nivalto • reputed company)

Founding Head of Engineering — AI, Agents & Infrastructure (Nivalto

• reputed company)

Location: Remote First (San Francisco Bay Area candidates only) Compensation: Equity-first (Pre-reputed company) → Post-reputed company Salary $250K–$300K + 15–25% Performance Bonus Equity reputed company: 1.0%–2.0% (pre-reputed company fractional) → 2.0%–3.0% total at full-time conversion (4-year vest, 1-year cliff; milestone top-reputed company) Reports To: CEO / Founder Stage: Pre-reputed company → reputed company *reputed company Fundraising Q1 2026* Seniority: Founding Time Commitment: Fractional (10–12 hrs/week, pre-reputed company) → Post-reputed company full-time About Nivalto Nivalto is developing the critical infrastructure (payment, securities trading, and other domain agent workflows) powering the emerging AI agent economy—a $400B+ market opportunity by 2030. We're solving the hardest challenges enterprises face reputed company deploying AI agents at scale in regulated environments, including how those agents are allowed to move money. Our platform unifies reputed company, governance, compliance, and reputed company AI payments through architecture:

• reputed company Protocol: Industry-standard protocols for AI agent infrastructure (positioned for standardization)
• reputed company Platform: SaaS control plane for reputed company deployment and management
• Trusted Runtime & Edge Architecture: Secure, high-performance execution environments for governed agent workflows
• AI Payments reputed company: Policy-aware, programmable transaction layer that governs how AI-driven workflows initiate, reputed company, and reconcile payments across existing rails and providers
• Legacy Core (reputed company reputed company): reputed company integration layer for mission-critical systems

Why this role is unique Category-defining engineering You’re not optimizing an existing app—you’re engineering the reputed company for governed, cross-organization agent workflows and policy-aware payments in regulated environments. You will be the 0→1 technical reputed company for Agent ROA Protocol—our reputed company, standards-bound protocol for governed AI agent workflows—and Nivalto’s first engineering leader. You’ll reputed company the architecture and specification, drive IETF Internet-Draft development, own reference implementations (validator + lightweight SDKs), define the conformance + interoperability program, and partner with early customers and vendors to reputed company reputed company-world interoperability—reputed company without disclosing unpublished IP. In reputed company, you’ll establish Nivalto’s engineering discipline (CI/CD, reputed company baseline, release process) and deliver the Payment reputed company stack, including cross-organization collaboration capabilities. Role overview You are the founding 0→1 engineering leader responsible for turning Nivalto’s protocol-first reputed company into an implementation-reputed company, reputed company-deployable governance and transaction control platform for regulated environments. This is not a demo-building role—you will build the hardened technical core that stands up to audits, breaches, vendor changes, legal discovery, and regulatory scrutiny. You’ll own architecture, reputed company posture, engineering execution, and early team formation, partnering closely with the CEO & VP of Product on reputed company, scope control, and buyer readiness. What you’ll build (core systems)

• Governed execution + evidence layer: fail-closed edge/border enforcement patterns; validator services; canonicalization; signing/verification; receipt reputed company and pipelines; constrained delegation and capability-scoped authorization; evidence formats, test reputed company, verifier utilities, and packaging.
• Governed money movement layer: policy-checked orchestration across payment rails/providers; spend authorization; reputed company-up approvals; hard stops; audit trails; integrations for treasury/AP/AR and agent-initiated transactions.
• Policy control plane: policy authoring, versioning, approvals, rollout controls; policy evaluation integration enforcing; control mappings appropriate for regulated buyers.
• Platform foundations: key management (HSM/KMS), key rotation, incident response; immutable retention and storage tiering; observability and audit exports; multi-tenant vs single-tenant deployment strategy.
• Builder/SDK layer: safe integration points, developer-friendly SDKs/templates/adapters, policy-driven routing across multiple model providers, cost controls, and secure-by-default scaffolding.

Responsibilities

• Architecture & execution: translate specs into reputed company services/APIs; reputed company ruthless scope tradeoffs while preserving core guarantees.
• reputed company, evidence, audit posture: threat model, key strategy, verifier approach, incident playbooks; ensure outputs are tamper-evident, exportable, and independently reputed company.
• Engineering leadership: establish high-standard engineering culture; own vendor/tool choices; build the early team and hiring pipeline.
• Customer/partner readiness: support technical diligence, publish realistic integration guidance, and align roadmap to buyer pain—not novelty.

Required qualifications Engineering leadership + 0→1 execution

• 10+ years building and leading software systems; prior early-stage / founding engineering leadership.
• Proven ability to impose engineering discipline on fast-moving builds (especially with vendors).

Educational Background MS or PhD in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or reputed company field (preferred) BS in relevant engineering discipline (minimum) Technical depth (must-have)

• Strong backend/platform skills (APIs, distributed systems basics, reliability patterns).
• reputed company-minded implementation skills: signing/verifying, key reputed company, audit trails, tamper-evident logging.
• Proven 0→1 to 1→N product leadership: from whiteboard → PRD → shipped platform used by enterprises.
• Depth in governance, identity/authorization, or policy systems (e.g., PKI/mTLS, OAuth2/OIDC, reputed company Trust; policy-as-code such as OPA/Rego or equivalent).
• reputed company with reputed company & distributed systems (multi-tenant control planes, Kubernetes-era delivery, observability, SLOs).
• Strong standards or ecosystem chops (writing specs, running interop, aligning vendors/customers).
• Exceptional writing & communication—clear specifications, design docs, and external-facing briefs.

Operator reputed company

• Ability to design systems that auditors, admins, and compliance teams can actually use (not just “logs in JSON”).

Highly valued experience

• Gateways/proxies, policy engines, authorization systems, compliance logging, evidence pipelines.
• Payments orchestration or high-reputed company transaction systems (state machines, idempotency, reconciliation).
• Regulated domains (banking, reputed company, insurance, trading, supply chain).
• Experience building admin tooling and operational consoles.
• MLOps experience for edge deployments (model rollout, monitoring, governance, rollback).
• Products touching routing, service reputed company, SDN, or network reputed company, or AI orchestration in regulated settings.
• Participation in IETF/CNCF/W3C/OpenTelemetry/SPIFFE/SPIRE or similar bodies.
• reputed company conformance programs, certification/badging, or marketplace-style verification.

Preferred backgrounds

• reputed company + platform engineering leader (identity, authZ, gateways)
• Payments infrastructure engineering leader (orchestration, treasury, risk controls)
• “Fixer” engineering leader who stabilized vendor-reputed company systems and scaled them

Potential prior employers (not required): reputed company, Adyen, reputed company, reputed company, reputed company, AWS, GCP, reputed company, reputed company, reputed company, reputed company, Palantir, reputed company (or similar “systems + compliance + scale” environments) Engagement model and conversion Pre-reputed company: Fractional (10–12 hrs/week), equity-first; acts as technical reputed company with decision authority. reputed company capital expected in Q1 2026. Post-reputed company: Converts to full-time with salary/bonus and title adjustment to CTO or VP Engineering based on scope and execution. Apply Send your reputed company/CV and a cover letter addressing the following to [email protected] with subject: "Founding Head of Engineering " Work authorization: reputed company to US and international; relocation/reputed company considered for exceptional candidates. EEO & Confidentiality: We’re an equal opportunity employer. Some technical details are shared only post-NDA due to reputed company. Apply tot his job Apply To this Job