Hiring your first engineer is the riskiest bet you’ll make as a founder.
Not fundraising. Not finding your first customer. Your first engineer decides whether you move fast and break things. Or move slow and break your company. In this post, we’ll break down:
Why the first engineer is so critical
The 5 traits that matter (and why)
How to spot these traits in real conversations
A framework to evaluate candidates
Where to actually find them (it’s not Linkedin)
The First Engineer Matters (More Than You Think)
When you hire your first engineer, you’re making three decisions in one:
Technical architecture → The languages, frameworks, and systems you pick today will stick for years.
Product velocity → How fast can you ship without burning down?
Culture blueprint → Every engineer after this one will be compared to them.
Stripe’s first engineer Greg Brockman set the foundation for how Stripe ships. Airbnb’s first engineer Nathan Blecharczyk wasn’t only “employee #3.” He scaled the platform while the founders were convincing strangers to share their couches.
The founding engineer is almost like a cofounder.
The 5 Traits That Matter
Through studying early-stage teams (and making mistakes myself), I’ve found a repeatable pattern. The best first engineers share these five traits:
1. Full-Stack Generalist
Why it matters: At early stage, specialization slows you down. You need someone who can go from database schema to UI in a single sprint.
Example: Figma’s early engineers wrote rendering engines and hacked together web app scaffolding. No “that’s not my job.”
Look for: They’ve built solo projects, indie apps, or open-source tools from scratch.
2. Bias Toward Action
Why it matters: Speed is survival. Startups don’t die from bad code, they die from running out of time.
Example: Instagram shipped its first app (then called Burbn) in 8 weeks. The code wasn’t elegant. The product mattered more.
Look for: When you ask, “Tell me about a time you shipped without perfect information,” they light up.
3. Product Intuition
Why it matters: Your first engineer will make product decisions every day implicitly or explicitly. If they don’t care about the user, you’ll feel it.
Example: Snapchat’s early engineers obsessed over speed because they knew milliseconds matter in engagement.
Look for: They ask “why” questions. They challenge features. They care about user outcomes, not just code purity.
4. Comfort With Ambiguity
Why it matters: Early stage is chaos. No roadmap. No clear specs. No QA team. Just problems that need solving yesterday.
Example: Coinbase engineers were shipping features while the price of Bitcoin moved 20% in an hour. They didn’t need certainty—they needed judgment.
Look for: Ask, “What do you do when priorities change daily?” Watch their reaction.
5. Ownership Mentality
Why it matters: A first engineer isn’t “a hire.” They’re a force multiplier who makes decisions like an owner.
Example: Evan Wallace at Figma built the rendering engine that made the entire product possible. That’s founder energy.
Look for: They talk about outcomes, not tasks.
The First Engineer Evaluation Framework
Here’s a simple scoring system to compare candidates:
Trait | Weight | Questions to Ask | Red Flags |
|---|---|---|---|
Full-stack ability | 25% | “Tell me about a product you built end-to-end.” | Overly specialized |
Bias to action | 20% | “What’s the fastest thing you’ve ever shipped?” | Talks about perfection |
Product intuition | 20% | “How do you decide what to build next?” | Never mentions users |
Ambiguity tolerance | 15% | “How do you work without specs?” | Needs process |
Ownership mentality | 20% | “What’s the biggest risk you took for a project?” | Talks like an employee |
Score them 1–5 on each. Top-tier first engineers score 20+ out of 25.
Where Do You Actually Find Them?
Forget job boards. The best first engineers aren’t applying. They’re building.
Your network → Tweet, email, DM. Ask for intros. Use Twill.
Maker communities → Indie Hackers, Hacker News, open-source GitHub repos.
Side project people → If they spend weekends coding something nobody asked for, that’s your signal.
Don’t pitch a job. Pitch a mission. Stripe didn’t say, “Come own the login page.” They said, “Help us rewire how money moves on the internet.”
The Takeaway
Your first engineer isn’t “headcount.”
If you get this right, you gain a partner who moves like you move. If you get it wrong, you’ll burn months and runway fixing the mess.
So don’t settle.
Create a hiring process that looks for action, ownership, and obsession. Referrals are a great way to vet that.