Founding Engineer, Data & Storage
Reports to
CTO
Type
Full-time
Location
Remote — relocation to London or SF possible later
About Modern Relay
We're building Omnigraph — the governed context graph for agent-native teams. As companies put agents across research, product, and operations, coordination breaks down: context is fragmented, agents make conflicting writes, and change is ungoverned. Omnigraph is the shared, governed foundation where agents, teams, and systems read the same context, coordinate work, and compound knowledge — on infrastructure the customer owns.
We're a $3M pre-seed company building a real database from first principles. The product lives or dies on its data layer.
The role
This is a founding-engineer seat that owns the heart of the product: how the graph is stored, compressed, versioned, and read under load. You'll be a core technical voice in design and architecture from day one — not a ticket-taker — working directly with the CTO and shaping the engine as the team grows.
We're honest about the arc: the first stretch is hands-in clearing storage and format tech debt before the greenfield design work fully opens up. If you want to join at the very start and stay through to a system you're proud of, this is that seat.
What you'll own
- Storage engine
- On-disk format
- Compression and encoding
- Versioning and branches
- Read path and query execution
- Out-of-core / streaming evaluation
- Hardware acceleration — SIMD/GPU where it earns its keep
- The data-layer roadmap and engineering standards
- Hiring and mentoring the team that builds underneath you
- Public representation of the work — talks, papers, open source
You might be a fit if you
- Have built database internals, storage engines, columnar/file formats, query execution, or compression — in production or in serious research
- Are fluent in a systems language (C++, Rust, or similar) and care about performance at the level of cache lines, branch prediction, and memory layout
- Think in terms of data layout and access patterns, not just APIs
- Want deep ownership of architecture and design decisions, and the autonomy of a founding seat
- Communicate clearly and make decisions in the open
Nice to have
- Vectorized/SIMD execution or GPU data processing
- Work on out-of-core / larger-than-RAM systems
- Open-source maintainership, published systems research, or conference talks
- Graph, nested, or string-heavy data — the parts the columnar world still hasn't solved
Compensation & logistics
- Founding-level equity — significant; this is the real upside. 4-year vest, 1-year cliff, early exercise available.
- Remote, with the option to relocate to London or SF later
- Unlimited token access to Claude, Codex, and every AI tool
- Flexible start — we'll work around notice periods and a clean handover from your current role
- A small, flat team, building alongside the founders
Apply now
If this sounds like you, email careers@modernrelay.com with the subject line "Application: Founding Engineer, Data & Storage". Attach a resume, point us at work you're proud of, and tell us what you'd build first.
We read every application. We write back within a week.