Is "founding engineer" always employee number one or two?

Usually, but not always by a strict headcount rule. It generally means you're joining before the product has found real market traction and before core technical decisions are locked in, roughly the first handful of engineering hires. Ask directly what number hire you'd be and what has been built so far.

Does a "founding" title come with founder-level equity?

No. Founders typically hold double-digit equity percentages; a founding engineer or founding team member typically holds a fraction of a percent to low single digits, depending on stage and how early they join. See our salary and equity guide for what is typical at each stage in Australia and New Zealand.

What does "generalist" actually mean in a job post?

It usually means the company needs someone who can move between problems as priorities shift, rather than someone hired to own one narrow function. It's a real and valuable role at an early startup, but it is worth clarifying what the first three months will actually look like, since "generalist" can also be a placeholder for a role the company hasn't fully defined yet.

Startup Job Titles Explained: Founding Engineer vs Early Employee vs Generalist

Startup job titles carry a lot of implied meaning that a big-company resume screener will completely miss, and a candidate evaluating an offer needs to actually understand. Here is what the common ones mean in practice, and what to ask before you sign.

Founding engineer (or founding designer, founding whatever)

This means you are joining before the product has proven itself in the market, often before the core architecture or design system exists at all. The work is undefined by design. You are not implementing a spec, you are helping write one. That is genuinely exciting for the right person and genuinely miserable for someone who does their best work with clear direction.

What to ask: what has actually been built so far, what number hire you would be, and how much runway the company has. "Founding" is a real signal about the stage and the kind of work, it is not, on its own, a signal about the company's chances.

Early employee (roughly hire three through fifteen)

The chaos of the founding stage has usually settled a little by here. There is a product, maybe some revenue, and a small team you will actually work alongside rather than defining from scratch. The role is still likely to be broader than the title suggests, but there is more structure to react to than a founding role has.

What to ask: what's already working and what's the biggest unsolved problem you'd be walking into. The honest answer tells you more about the actual job than the title does.

Generalist

A real and useful category at an early startup, and also sometimes a placeholder for "we don't know exactly what we need yet, but we need someone good." Both can be true at once. A generalist role can be a fantastic way to find your footing across several functions before specialising, or it can mean you become the default owner of anything nobody else wants, depending on the company.

What to ask: what does the first month actually look like, concretely, not in principle.

Forward deployed engineer

Borrowed from Palantir's playbook and increasingly common at startups selling complex software to enterprise or government customers. It means engineering work happens close to the customer, often on-site or embedded with their team, solving their specific integration or workflow problems rather than building generic product features. High-variance, high-learning work if you like being close to the customer; frustrating if you prefer heads-down building.

Reading equity and title together

None of these titles map to a fixed level of seniority or compensation the way "Senior Software Engineer" does at a large company. A "founding" title at a pre-seed company and the same title at a well-funded Series A look completely different in risk, resourcing, and what you'd actually be equipped to do. Read the title alongside the stage, the funding, and a specific equity number, not in place of them. Our salary and equity guide has ANZ-specific ranges to sanity-check an offer against.

If you're building a profile to put in front of startups directly rather than relying on job titles to do the talking, see our guide on building a candidate profile that actually gets noticed.