Your First Engineer

Your First Engineer

Founders spend a lot of time worrying about their first ten customers or their first round of funding. They should worry more about their first engineer. This decision has a higher leverage on your company’s future than almost any other choice you will make in the first year. It’s not just about getting code written. You are setting the standard for your technical culture your product quality and your ability to ship.

Hiring an employee is a transaction. You pay for work. Hiring your first engineer is more like choosing a cofounder. This person will have an enormous influence on what you build and how you build it. Get it right and you create a powerful foundation for growth. Get it wrong and you create a tangled mess that can take years to unwind.

The Wrong Profile

Before we talk about what to look for let’s talk about what to avoid. The most common mistake is hiring for the wrong context. Founders often look at impressive resumes from large tech companies. They see a senior engineer from Google or Facebook and think they have found a safe bet. This is usually a mistake.

An engineer at a large company operates with a huge support system. They have product managers designers infrastructure teams and established processes. Their job is often to be a specialist a deep expert in one small part of a massive system. In a startup you need a generalist. You need someone who can think about the database the user interface and the deployment script all in the same day. The big company veteran often struggles without their support system. They are used to a world of specialists and process not a world of urgent general problems.

Another profile to be wary of is the technology dogmatist. This is the person who believes there is only one right way to build software. They will want to use the latest framework or a complex architecture because it is technically interesting or popular. In an early startup your goal is learning and speed not technical purity. You need someone who is pragmatic someone who will use simple tools to solve user problems quickly. You need flexibility not dogma.

What to Look For

So what should you look for? I think it comes down to three things builder’s instinct user empathy and a steep learning curve. Notice that none of these are about knowing a specific programming language.

A Builder’s Instinct

You want someone who builds things because they can’t help it. Look for side projects. Look for contributions to open source. Ask what they have built for fun outside of work or school. People with a true builder’s instinct are self directed. They don’t need a detailed spec to get started. They see problems and start building solutions. This is the exact personality you need when you have more problems than people.

This trait is a proxy for passion and resourcefulness. Someone who builds things in their spare time has already proven they can create value from nothing. They know how to ship a project without a manager or a deadline. They are the person who will get your first product out the door.

User Empathy

Your first engineer is also your first product person. They must be able to think like a user. They should be interested in why they are building something not just what they are building. A great way to test for this is to ask them about a product they use and love. Can they articulate why it’s great? Can they identify the small details that make the experience good? Then ask them about a product they hate. Can they explain the specific design or usability flaws that make it frustrating?

An engineer without user empathy will build what you tell them. An engineer with user empathy will challenge your assumptions and suggest better solutions. They will help you build a product that people actually want to use.

A Steep Learning Curve

In a startup the technology you use today might be obsolete in a year. The problems you are solving will change constantly. You cannot hire for a specific set of existing skills. You must hire for the ability to acquire new skills quickly. We call this having a high slope or a steep learning curve.

How do you spot this? Ask about a time they had to learn something completely new for a project. How did they approach it? What did they build? People with a high slope are intellectually curious. They are not intimidated by the unknown. They see a new problem as an opportunity to learn. Someone with two years of intense experience who has learned three new technologies is more valuable than someone with ten years of experience doing the same thing over and over.

The Interview

Your interview process should be designed to test for these traits. Forget about brain teasers or complex whiteboard algorithms. They don’t predict real world performance.

Instead try this:

1. Code Review. Ask to see code from a project they are proud of. Have them walk you through it. Ask why they made certain decisions. This shows you how they think and communicate about technical problems.

2. Paid Project. Give them a small self contained project that takes a day or two. Pay them for their time. This is the single best predictor of success. It shows you what it’s actually like to work with them. You see their real output not their interview performance.

3. Product Discussion. Talk about your product and your users. See if they ask good questions. See if they get excited about the problem you are solving. The best candidates will start brainstorming ideas and solutions with you.

Hiring your first engineer is a foundational act. You are not just filling a role. You are setting your company’s DNA. Look for a fellow builder a product thinker and a rapid learner. The rest will follow.

— Rishi Banerjee
September 2025