In my mind, a founding engineer is someone who holds at least 10% of the stock or has at least 50% as much as the founders, if they have less than 20% each.
What is your definition of a founding engineer? It seems like most of these ads are just using the term for an early hire.
2) if you’re not around when the incorporation docs are drawn up and filling out an 83b you’re not a founding anything. Just an early hire, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but don’t let yourself get into something that feels bigger than it is.
3) Equity doesn’t necessarily track with being early. There’s a correlation of course, but you can have someone join a startup right out of school and then not receive “significant” equity relative to the rest of the team if they’re not brining nearly as much upside to the newly formed company as an engineer with 20 years of domain experience who joins 3-6 months later.
4) I’d read it as the founders being non-technical and/or more like investors than operators. Be cognizant of that as you’re talking to them.
10% is a little high. Even for a 3 founder startup without investors, it's about 33% each. "Founding engineer" isn't exactly a CTO or tech lead title. It sounds like position where you take a similar workload to the CTO, but at a higher salary, lower responsibility.
Contractor roles are common as a lot of startups don't want to deal with the legal implications of having a full time employee, firing costs, etc. It's easier on a low budget too, just to contract enough MVP and then spend a couple months raising the first round of investment, or marketing the product.
I liked contractor roles because the time/pay ratio is excellent and the risk/equity is as well. Do note that 90% of startups fail. Joining something with even 50% equity might not be a good deal, especially if you've never worked with the founders.