Senior Software Engineer

About the Company

We’re partnering with an ambitious, early-stage technology company operating in stealth mode, founded by a second-time entrepreneur whose previous company was acquired for $2.5B.

Over the past two years, they've assembled a world-class team of entrepreneurs, product builders, engineers, and research scientists from institutions including Princeton, MIT, NYU, HBO, Amazon, and Pinterest. Through extensive interdisciplinary research and collaboration with dozens of academic experts, we've moved from concept to product development and are now entering a critical phase of building and launching our first experiences.

This is an opportunity to help define the future of the internet from the ground up.

The Role

We’re looking for exceptional Founding Engineers to join as a senior individual contributor and help build the company's core product and technical infrastructure from the ground up.

This is a deeply hands-on engineering role. You'll spend the majority of your time designing systems, writing code, shipping products, and solving difficult technical problems alongside a small, highly collaborative team.

As an early engineering hire, you'll have significant influence over architecture, technical decisions, development practices, and product direction. You'll work directly with product, design, research, and company leadership to turn ambitious ideas into scalable, production-ready technology.

This is an individual contributor opportunity, not a people management role. We're looking for someone who wants to remain close to the technology while having the ownership, autonomy, and influence of a founding team member.

What We're Looking For

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• Strong track record as a hands-on individual contributor building and shipping production software.
• Experience building products from zero to one or working in early-stage environments.
• Strong backend or full-stack engineering capabilities.
• Experience designing scalable systems, APIs, and data architectures.
• Ability to independently take ambiguous problems and drive them through implementation.

Especially Relevant Experience

We'd be particularly excited about engineers who have worked on:

• Consumer-facing products at scale
• Complex, data-intensive applications
• Machine learning or AI-powered product experiences
• Distributed systems and scalable backend infrastructure
• Real-time systems
• Social, network, marketplace, or collaboration products
• Web technologies and infrastructure
• Developer platforms or infrastructure
• Early-stage products where engineers worked closely with users and product teams

You do not need experience across all of these areas. We care more about technical depth, curiosity, and your ability to learn and build in unfamiliar territory.

What Makes This Different

• This isn't a role where you'll inherit a mature codebase, narrow backlog, or predetermined technical roadmap.
• You'll join while foundational decisions are still being made, with the opportunity to influence architecture, prototype new approaches, challenge assumptions, and build technology that could become central to the company's long-term success.
• The team operates with the speed and ownership of an early-stage startup while benefiting from the experience and perspective of a proven entrepreneur.
• We're looking for engineers who enjoy ambiguity, think independently, and are motivated by the opportunity to build something entirely new.

Why Join?

• True zero-to-one engineering: Build foundational technology while the product and architecture are still taking shape.
• Stay technical: Grow your impact without having to move into people management.
• Founding-level ownership: Have a meaningful voice in architecture, product decisions, and engineering culture.
• Exceptional team: Collaborate with experienced entrepreneurs, engineers, product builders, and researchers.
• Ambitious technical challenges: Work on complex problems across data, infrastructure, intelligent systems, and consumer technology.
• Experienced founder: Work directly with a second-time entrepreneur whose previous company was acquired for $2.5B.
• Early-stage impact: Join at a pivotal stage where your technical decisions and contributions will have a lasting influence on the company.

You'll likely thrive in this environment if you're a builder at heart. You enjoy writing code, solving technically difficult problems, and seeing something you built reach real users.

You're comfortable when the answer isn't obvious. You challenge assumptions, move quickly without sacrificing thoughtful engineering, and care about the product as much as the underlying technology.

Most importantly, you want to remain an exceptional individual contributor while having the scope, ownership, and influence typically associated with an early founding team.