About the roleThis is a rare seat. You won't be maintaining someone else's roadmap. You'll be taking new products from zero to one, owning them end-to-end, and putting them in front of real users fast.
What you'll do- Take new products from 01 - design, build, and ship full-stack systems and developer tools end-to-end
- Build AI-native software: agent orchestration, semantic search, embeddings, knowledge graphs, LLM workflows
- Own developer and user experience completely - 30-second installs, time-to-first-value measured in minutes, interfaces people actually want to use
- Ship some work in the open and engage a real community; ship other work as commercial product. Pick the right call for each
- Use your own fully AI-enabled dev stack and make pragmatic tradeoffs in a fast-moving environment
Who this is forThis role is ideal if you:
- Are a strong full-stack, product-minded engineer who owns products, not just code - no PMs, no designers, you make the product and UX calls
- Live in an AI-native dev stack and have built AI-enabled products, agents, or prototypes
- Care about developer experience and the craft of a tool people love
- Like turning hard problems into clean, usable systems and shipping fast
- Are low-ego, comfortable with ambiguity, and get along with everyone in our ~100-person company
Backgrounds that tend to succeed- Former founders and early-stage startup engineers
- Prolific open-source contributors or maintainers
- Product engineers who've built and shipped complete products end-to-end
- Engineers who've owned both backend systems and frontend/user experience
What we're looking forRequired - Experience shipping full-stack or systems software end-to-end - Strong system design and independent decision-making - Strong product sense and comfort designing user experiences - Clear communication and the ability to work directly with non-technical stakeholders - High judgment and integrity
Nice to have - LLMs, prompt engineering, or agent-based systems - Open-source maintainership and community engagement - TypeScript, Postgres/pgvector, Rails, React (the stack our current products run on) - Retrieval, search, or knowledge-graph systems
We care more about your ability to build and ship complete products than any specific stack.
How we workYC operates with a small, high-trust team. There are no rigid roadmaps or handoffs between product, design, and engineering - engineers are expected to use judgment, talk to users, and build the right thing. You'll work on high-impact problems and be responsible for the full experience, not just the implementation.
Details- Compensation: $185K-$485K base + profit-sharing (comparable to startup equity or VC carry)
- Benefits: Medical, dental, vision, 401(k) + 4% match, parental leave, flexible PTO, and more
- Location: San Francisco Bay Area (or willing to relocate)
- Work authorization: Y Combinator is willing to sponsor certain employment visas in accordance with company policy.
As a member of the team, you'll get full access to the YC program, just like founders do. You'll learn how YC works, follow hundreds of companies, and meet some of the most successful people in the startup world.
