Placing a Founding Engineer at the data infrastructure layer powering AI research across US national laboratories
📍 San Francisco · 🎯 Full Stack Engineering · ⚡ Scientific Data Infrastructure
ABOUT LABRIC
Labric is a YC-backed startup building the missing data layer for scientific research. World-class research labs are running on outdated data infrastructure – experimental context lives on post-its, scientists email files to themselves for analysis, and more time is spent wrangling data than doing science.
Labric fixes that. Their platform automatically captures and structures instrument data, connecting fragmented lab equipment and spreadsheets into a single environment where scientists can run cross-experimental analysis and apply modern AI to their own data. At the time of the search the company had fewer than 5 employees and was already shipping to multiple US Department of Energy national laboratories.
THE CHALLENGE
The founding team needed their first Senior Full Stack Engineer – someone who could own core data infrastructure (ingestion, normalisation, storage, indexing), ship across the full stack (Python backend, TypeScript/Next.js frontend), and work directly with scientists to turn complex domain problems into working software.
Finding senior engineers willing to join a sub-5-person team at an early enough stage to earn meaningful equity is consistently one of the hardest briefs in the SF market. The pool of engineers who combine strong full stack fundamentals with genuine comfort in an unstructured, research-adjacent environment is narrow. Most strong candidates at this level are already well-compensated at growth-stage companies and require a compelling reason to take the early-stage risk.
WHY AMIGOS?
Labric engaged us because of our track record placing engineers at early-stage, technically ambitious companies in San Francisco. Having worked with YC-backed startups across AI infrastructure, scientific tooling and data platforms, we understood both the calibre of engineer required and the specific pitch needed to attract them – particularly for a pre-product-market-fit company where the equity story and mission clarity are as important as the comp.
OUR APPROACH
Rather than posting the role publicly, we ran a targeted passive outreach search focused on engineers with prior experience at YC-backed companies, research-adjacent tooling companies or scientific software environments. We led outreach with the mission – the combination of national laboratory partnerships, YC backing and the genuine scarcity of what Labric is building proved to be a compelling hook for the right profiles.
Candidates were screened against a structured scorecard covering technical depth, startup experience, ownership mindset and genuine curiosity about the scientific domain. We presented a qualified shortlist within the first two weeks of brief.
THE RESULT
Placement made within 4 weeks. The hired engineer met all core criteria: strong full stack fundamentals, prior funded startup experience, and a genuine interest in the scientific research space. Labric now has the founding engineering capacity to accelerate their platform build and continue expanding their national laboratory partnerships.