Meeting Title: Brainforge AI Engineer Interview Date: 2026-04-30 Meeting participants: Farhaj Shahid, Fireflies.ai Notetaker Farhaj Shahid, Kaela Gallagher
WEBVTT
1 00:02:24.500 ⇒ 00:02:25.550 Farhaj Shahid: Hi, Keller.
2 00:02:31.280 ⇒ 00:02:32.760 Kaela Gallagher: Hi, how’s it going?
3 00:02:33.140 ⇒ 00:02:34.430 Farhaj Shahid: Good, how are you doing?
4 00:02:34.860 ⇒ 00:02:44.830 Kaela Gallagher: Doing well, thank you. Thanks for taking some time to chat with me today. Yeah, excited to get to know a little bit more about you.
5 00:02:45.110 ⇒ 00:02:49.589 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah, wanted to start off by asking, can you remind me how we connected?
6 00:02:50.150 ⇒ 00:03:01.450 Farhaj Shahid: Yes, I reached… I think you sent me an in-mail on LinkedIn, and I think before that I reached out to Utam, and I think he… I think, connected us.
7 00:03:02.750 ⇒ 00:03:03.570 Kaela Gallagher: Okay.
8 00:03:04.850 ⇒ 00:03:10.960 Kaela Gallagher: Did you find us through, like, a LinkedIn post, or curious, like, how you came across Brainforge?
9 00:03:10.960 ⇒ 00:03:27.280 Farhaj Shahid: Yep, so, I go to Bucknell University, I’m a current senior there, and, Utem is an alum from Bucknell as well, so I’ve connected with him for a while, and I’ve always… and it’s interesting to see what he’s been building, and so, yeah, that’s how I first got to know Brainforge.
10 00:03:27.790 ⇒ 00:03:33.979 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, okay, very cool, glad to see the, alumni community in effect.
11 00:03:34.960 ⇒ 00:03:47.469 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, so you’re currently a senior. Are you, like, looking for full-time work, or, maybe full-time once you graduate? Like, what does that kind of look for… look like for you?
12 00:03:47.470 ⇒ 00:04:02.839 Farhaj Shahid: Yup, so I… yeah, graduation is in May, so, like, three weeks around the corner. I’m currently looking for roles upon graduation, yes. So… and still interviewing, so yup, that’s, why I’m here.
13 00:04:03.440 ⇒ 00:04:09.340 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, okay, so your, like, potential start date, I guess, then would be, like, mid… mid-May?
14 00:04:10.140 ⇒ 00:04:20.370 Farhaj Shahid: I think mid-May is when grad is happening. I think, I mentioned July 1st as my start date. I have, like, travel plans with a couple of friends, like, right after graduation.
15 00:04:20.480 ⇒ 00:04:21.070 Farhaj Shahid: Oh.
16 00:04:21.070 ⇒ 00:04:21.890 Kaela Gallagher: Okay.
17 00:04:22.660 ⇒ 00:04:24.090 Farhaj Shahid: Yup, so…
18 00:04:24.090 ⇒ 00:04:24.630 Kaela Gallagher: Okay.
19 00:04:25.680 ⇒ 00:04:35.420 Kaela Gallagher: That makes sense. And then I noticed on your LinkedIn, you’re currently working, like, in a software engineer capacity?
20 00:04:35.420 ⇒ 00:04:50.119 Farhaj Shahid: Yes, so I interned for Prometric, which is a med tech company, last summer as a full-stack engineering intern, and after my internship concluded, I was promoted as a customer-facing software engineer, and I’ve been continuing my… working there part-time throughout my senior year.
21 00:04:51.730 ⇒ 00:04:56.640 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, okay, cool. What kind of, like, projects are you working on there?
22 00:04:56.850 ⇒ 00:05:09.340 Farhaj Shahid: Yep, so it’s, mainly… a lot of, it is, interfacing with our enterprise clients, mainly school districts, and building… yup, and, like, building a lot of, tooling and features.
23 00:05:09.340 ⇒ 00:05:22.700 Farhaj Shahid: For them, like, so most recently, one school district wanted an all-export feature for their data to meet some compliance, issues they had, so I built the… I built that for them, and…
24 00:05:22.730 ⇒ 00:05:26.240 Farhaj Shahid: Just working with… within, like, the ed tech space.
25 00:05:26.690 ⇒ 00:05:27.420 Farhaj Shahid: So that’s.
26 00:05:27.420 ⇒ 00:05:27.950 Kaela Gallagher: Okay.
27 00:05:27.950 ⇒ 00:05:29.090 Farhaj Shahid: So far, yep.
28 00:05:29.500 ⇒ 00:05:41.770 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, okay, got it. And then I noticed you applied for, like, our AI engineer position. Curious, are you using AI in that role, or, like, what makes you passionate about the AI space?
29 00:05:41.770 ⇒ 00:05:54.630 Farhaj Shahid: Yup. So yeah, we’re using, Prometric encourages the use of a lot of, modern tooling, and honestly, that’s something that is a personal interest of mine. I’m, like, very chronically online on tech Twitter,
30 00:05:55.100 ⇒ 00:06:06.959 Farhaj Shahid: Frontier Labs and researchers are putting out, and really up-to-date with, like, the modern tooling and ecosystem at the same time. Use it for a lot of my personal work, and dev work.
31 00:06:07.000 ⇒ 00:06:19.920 Farhaj Shahid: So it’s been just pretty interesting to see how this has developed since my freshman year, because that was, like, when ChatGPT first launched to the public, and just seeing the exponential growth this space has seen in the past 4 years has been amazing.
32 00:06:20.330 ⇒ 00:06:28.400 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah, yeah, okay, cool. Are you doing any, like, AI projects on the side, too, like, in your personal life?
33 00:06:28.960 ⇒ 00:06:48.619 Farhaj Shahid: So, yeah, I’ve been, since a freshman, I’ve just been building and shipping things on the side. So I have my… I founded my own, agency, and one of the… and working directly with clients, to, basic… non-technical clients to basically build their entire product or vision into existence.
34 00:06:48.620 ⇒ 00:07:11.960 Farhaj Shahid: And one of those was Weightless, which is a UK-based digital health agency. And I built the entire product for them, from the ideation to design to development. It’s processed over 850,000 British pounds so far, and it includes a lot of AI automation that saves their team, like, upwards of, like, 20 to 40 hours of work per week, whether it’s, like, invoicing.
35 00:07:11.960 ⇒ 00:07:17.230 Farhaj Shahid: Sending updated notifications for reordering, among other stuff.
36 00:07:17.230 ⇒ 00:07:20.750 Farhaj Shahid: And another project that I made was,
37 00:07:20.750 ⇒ 00:07:44.980 Farhaj Shahid: an app for my hometown, like, co-working space, so I basically built them an app to get free office space for the summer, and did a lot of automations for them, too. For example, payroll, managing meetings, and, like, office spaces, that sort of stuff, because at the end of every month, they took their entire team, like, 3 or 4 days to get all of that stuff done, because it was, like.
38 00:07:44.980 ⇒ 00:07:45.650 Kaela Gallagher: No.
39 00:07:45.650 ⇒ 00:08:00.900 Farhaj Shahid: it was, like, scattered through a lot of messy spreadsheets, and other documents, you know? So it was a pretty fun project at the same time. So yeah, really, into leveraging AI to its fullest potential in my personal projects, or even in work.
40 00:08:01.570 ⇒ 00:08:17.720 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, okay, awesome. It’s great to hear that you’ve done kind of, like, the client-facing side as well. We are a consultancy, so, having engineers that can hop on client calls and communicate with clients and, like, really understand
41 00:08:18.080 ⇒ 00:08:32.230 Kaela Gallagher: you know, stakeholder needs and communicate technical solutions, like, that’s just a huge priority for us and all of our engineering, hires. So, great to hear that you have a background, with that. In terms of…
42 00:08:32.340 ⇒ 00:08:38.630 Kaela Gallagher: The kind of, like, tooling that you’ve been using for AI? Like, what kind of platforms are you…
43 00:08:38.990 ⇒ 00:08:42.240 Kaela Gallagher: Most passionate about.
44 00:08:42.240 ⇒ 00:09:04.479 Farhaj Shahid: Okay, so, like, I’ve used a lot of tooling, that’s been out there. Like, I use Cursor, Claw Code, OpenCode, like, I try all of them, basically, see what works for me. I dabbled into using OpenClaw for a little bit, but I really liked to waste a lot of my tokens, so I switched to using Hermes agents for a bit.
45 00:09:04.480 ⇒ 00:09:06.380 Farhaj Shahid: And
46 00:09:06.380 ⇒ 00:09:15.560 Farhaj Shahid: Moreover than that, like, for some of my personal projects, like, if we want to build agents with memory, I’ve been using Langraph and Langchain for that as well.
47 00:09:15.620 ⇒ 00:09:23.319 Farhaj Shahid: So I guess it really depends on the project, and the needs at the moment. So, like, the tech stack can change in that regards.
48 00:09:23.880 ⇒ 00:09:27.480 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, okay, cool. We are using…
49 00:09:27.970 ⇒ 00:09:50.930 Kaela Gallagher: We’ve been using Cursa for a while, internally, but we also just, started using OpenCode, too. I think a lot of people more on the development side are using OpenCode. And then our AI team is, you know, not only, like, working with clients a ton, but also working, on a lot of our, like, internal tooling and
50 00:09:50.930 ⇒ 00:09:59.090 Kaela Gallagher: platforms, and we have a pretty, like, robust kind of internal system built out, too, with just tons of skills and really cool features, so…
51 00:09:59.360 ⇒ 00:10:06.399 Kaela Gallagher: In our AI engineer role, like, you would kind of be touching both external and probably internal things as well.
52 00:10:06.620 ⇒ 00:10:18.169 Farhaj Shahid: Yep, that sounded really interesting, and that’s why I applied for this specific role as well, because it really speaks out to me, and, like, shit, like, stuff that I’ve already been doing, and stuff that I want to continue doing at the same time.
53 00:10:18.170 ⇒ 00:10:26.749 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah, yeah, definitely. So where… where are you based right now, and, like, where do you see yourself kind of ending up post-grad?
54 00:10:26.750 ⇒ 00:10:38.000 Farhaj Shahid: So, currently, Bucknell is in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, so I’m currently here until May, but I am based in the New York area, and that’s where I’m going to… planning to be, upon graduation.
55 00:10:39.110 ⇒ 00:10:45.830 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, okay, got it. And then what about, like, your compensation target? Like, what’s kind of the range you’re looking at?
56 00:10:45.830 ⇒ 00:11:00.010 Farhaj Shahid: Okay, I’ll be honest, Kayla, I’m… right now, I’m mostly focused on finding the right fit, based on where I can get meaningful work and, like, learn a lot from the team at the same time, so that’s something that comes secondary to me.
57 00:11:00.010 ⇒ 00:11:13.550 Farhaj Shahid: So, I think on my application, I wrote, like, I think 50 an hour, but yeah, that’s, like, up for, like, debate or negotiation, because, right now, I’m mostly focused on finding the right fit where I can learn, you know, being in the early stage career.
58 00:11:14.430 ⇒ 00:11:17.300 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah, okay, that makes sense.
59 00:11:17.300 ⇒ 00:11:40.059 Kaela Gallagher: just to kind of give an overview of, like, how we’re doing things right now at Brainforge, our entire team is on a 1099 basis, which means independent contracting. So, given that, like, we’re not able to do visa sponsorships or anything, because it’s, like, a contractor relationship. And then given that, too, like, the pay is an hourly rate.
60 00:11:40.180 ⇒ 00:11:54.680 Kaela Gallagher: And that’s kind of flat. That being said, we have tons of opportunities for bonus, whether it’s referral bonus, earning certifications. If you bring in, clients, we pay you out a certain percentage of the deal. So, there’s…
61 00:11:54.680 ⇒ 00:11:55.590 Farhaj Shahid: Oh, bing.
62 00:11:55.590 ⇒ 00:11:59.500 Kaela Gallagher: Other opportunities to earn additional, money.
63 00:11:59.500 ⇒ 00:12:11.289 Farhaj Shahid: And I also understand that it’s, like, an early-stage practice right now, and, like, the founders are also, like, gearing to, like, grow that at the same time, so totally understand that, and that works for me as well.
64 00:12:11.330 ⇒ 00:12:15.770 Farhaj Shahid: And, like, I feel like, in…
65 00:12:15.770 ⇒ 00:12:26.419 Farhaj Shahid: coming on as, like, one of the junior engineers, like, I would also be open to, A, like, working on the technical side, but also helping on, like, finding the clients, like, marketing at the same time, you know, because
66 00:12:26.420 ⇒ 00:12:41.860 Farhaj Shahid: early-stage startups really need people that can wear multiple different hats and be comfortable with a lot of different things. So, another thing about me is, like, I’m not just left-brained, I’m right-brained at the same time. I’m analytical, but also creative. I’m currently pursuing, like, a design minor.
67 00:12:41.860 ⇒ 00:13:01.270 Farhaj Shahid: At Bucknell as well. So, yeah, I just got done with my last graphic design class of the semester, which has been pretty interesting. So, I am someone that’s comfortable shipping across the stack, but also, like, making sure that what we ship looks and feels amazing and is intuitive for users at the same time. So, yeah, that’s some of the energy and qualities that I bring.
68 00:13:01.270 ⇒ 00:13:20.310 Kaela Gallagher: Amazing. I feel like you really kind of understand what we… what we need right now as an organization, so, awesome. I’m trying to think if I forgot anything else. I did ask about location because, we are fully remote, like, we have team across the globe right now.
69 00:13:20.310 ⇒ 00:13:37.480 Kaela Gallagher: That being said, we have kind of some natural, like, hotspots popping up, with a good amount of us in LA, and then Utam is in Austin, so, you know, if people are willing to relocate to either of those places, it is a bonus for us, for sure. So…
70 00:13:38.230 ⇒ 00:13:51.140 Farhaj Shahid: For me, currently, the only two cities or places that I was looking at, or three actually, was either New York, or SF or LA, because I feel like a lot of the interesting things in tech are happening in those places.
71 00:13:51.140 ⇒ 00:13:52.160 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah.
72 00:13:52.160 ⇒ 00:13:57.409 Farhaj Shahid: So, yeah, it’s interesting to see that a lot of people are based in LA as well.
73 00:13:58.020 ⇒ 00:14:13.329 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we have a good, good squad out here. We usually do, like, lunch once a week, and then just co-work for the afternoon, which has been really fun. Even though we’re, we’re remote, it’s, like, just nice to have that interaction.
74 00:14:13.510 ⇒ 00:14:32.089 Kaela Gallagher: And I agree with you, like, wanting to be in a tech hub. I actually just visited Austin recently for the first time. Okay. I was really, like, surprised at the tech community there. Like, Atlassian has offices, and they… they even have, like, an AI high school. Like.
75 00:14:32.090 ⇒ 00:14:33.779 Farhaj Shahid: Interesting, I’ve never heard of that.
76 00:14:33.780 ⇒ 00:14:39.430 Kaela Gallagher: Interesting how they’re kind of up and coming, so I guess we’ll have to keep Austin on our radars, but…
77 00:14:39.430 ⇒ 00:14:43.659 Farhaj Shahid: Yep, yup. I haven’t been to Austin yet, personally, I’ve been to Dallas and that area.
78 00:14:43.660 ⇒ 00:14:44.340 Kaela Gallagher: Okay.
79 00:14:44.340 ⇒ 00:14:48.789 Farhaj Shahid: But yeah, like, Austin is still on my list to visit in… well, I’m in Texas.
80 00:14:49.010 ⇒ 00:14:59.269 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, okay, cool. Well, if you’re joining Brain Forge, I feel like you might have an opportunity to… to travel there. That’s why… that’s why I went for work, so…
81 00:14:59.270 ⇒ 00:14:59.860 Farhaj Shahid: Good.
82 00:15:00.060 ⇒ 00:15:04.779 Kaela Gallagher: Cool, awesome. Any, like, questions that I can help answer for you?
83 00:15:04.970 ⇒ 00:15:20.060 Farhaj Shahid: Yeah, like, I guess, if you could help me understand how, like, the typical interview process at Brainforge looks like, and I guess potential next steps, I think we had a great conversation, I would just love to learn more, you know.
84 00:15:20.350 ⇒ 00:15:38.579 Kaela Gallagher: Yes, absolutely. So, in terms of our interview process, we have 3 rounds. So, first you would meet with Sam for just kind of an overview of your experience and cultural fit. Second round is technical, so, like, no live coding, but really diving into the technical concepts.
85 00:15:38.780 ⇒ 00:15:48.430 Kaela Gallagher: And then third round, we give you a take-home challenge, and you come to the final panel with a solution and present it as if you’re presenting to a client.
86 00:15:48.430 ⇒ 00:15:50.640 Farhaj Shahid: Amazing real-life consultant work.
87 00:15:50.640 ⇒ 00:16:04.430 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah, exactly. Right after this, I can send you the link for the first round. Each round, we’ll send you a booking link, so the quicker you book each round, the quicker the process moves.
88 00:16:04.430 ⇒ 00:16:11.019 Kaela Gallagher: I will say, I’ll have to… to chat with Utam, right now…
89 00:16:11.020 ⇒ 00:16:27.790 Kaela Gallagher: I think we’re looking sooner than a July 1st start date, but we are just growing a ton right now. Like, I have a feeling even if we hire somebody for this AI role in the next couple weeks, we will have another one open by July, so…
90 00:16:27.960 ⇒ 00:16:40.750 Kaela Gallagher: Personally, I feel like it’s worth just having you kind of move through the process now, and then maybe we make that decision to, you know, hire one engineer now, and then, you know, bring you on in July. We can kind of stay close to that.
91 00:16:41.140 ⇒ 00:16:57.929 Farhaj Shahid: Yep, that sounds good, because, yeah, as you said, like, early practice, and it’s good, and I love that you guys are growing, and so, yeah, definitely would love to stay on your radar. And I guess if you could give, or send me more details, I guess, about each round, and the…
92 00:16:57.930 ⇒ 00:17:03.529 Farhaj Shahid: what to expect, sort of, so I can best prepare for them at the same time, that would be amazing.
93 00:17:03.530 ⇒ 00:17:08.390 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah, absolutely. I’ll send that over, when I… when I send you the email.
94 00:17:08.859 ⇒ 00:17:12.769 Farhaj Shahid: Perfect. It was really great chatting with you, Kayla.
95 00:17:12.770 ⇒ 00:17:17.020 Kaela Gallagher: You as well! It was so great meeting you. And how do I pronounce your name?
96 00:17:17.020 ⇒ 00:17:18.270 Farhaj Shahid: Furhodge.
97 00:17:18.270 ⇒ 00:17:21.749 Kaela Gallagher: Rahaj, nice to meet you. Thank you for your time.
98 00:17:21.750 ⇒ 00:17:23.719 Farhaj Shahid: Have a best… have a good day.
99 00:17:23.720 ⇒ 00:17:26.020 Kaela Gallagher: You too. Bye. Bye.