Founding Product Engineer

HumanLayer is the best way to get AI to solve hard problems in complex codebases. We help CTOs and VPEs drive the transition to 99% AI-written code in their engineering orgs.

Learn more about our mission, why Stanford says AI coding agents can't solve hard problems in complex codebases, and how we're changing that in our Getting AI to Work in Complex Codebases (with over 400 comments on HN) and our talk at AI Engineer Code Summit from November: Advanced Context Engineering for Coding Agents

At HumanLayer, we’re on a mission to change how teams build software with AI. If we had a motto it would be “no vibes allowed” - we believe that AI agent-enabled coding is a deeply technical engineering craft, and we’re building CodeLayer to unlock it at scale. A Stanford study from June 2025 said AI can’t solve hard problems or work well in complex or legacy codebases, and we’re proving them wrong with advanced techniques inspired by Context Engineering (a term originally coined by our CEO Dex in April 2025). Learn more about our mission and learnings at https://hlyr.dev/ace-fca

Our product is an Agentic IDE built on claude code that helps CTOs and VPEs drive the transition to 99% AI-written code in their engineering orgs. Our MRR grew 100% last month, and we’re bringing on a founding engineer who loves to ship like crazy and get in the weeds with customers to solve big problems in AI Developer Productivity.

You…

• Work across the entire stack - frontend apps, backend services, native executables, infrastructure, CI
• Have deep experience building in the Typescript ecosystem. We use it across the entire stack - frontend, backend, native executables, infrastructure-as-code.
• Ship like an engineer, think like a product owner. You have deep empathy for users and are dedicated to creating a world-class user experience.
• Strong in CS fundamentals - operating systems, networking, data structures.
• You’re a 99th-percentile Claude Code or Codex user
• You know Postgres/MySQL like the back of your hand
• Love working with customers to solve their problems. Expect to be forward-deployed to help onboard new customers.
• Enjoy hotkeymaxxing - vim, superhuman, RTS games, etc.
• Are familiar with auth’n/z - OAuth 2.0, etc.
• Are located in SF or willing to relocate (we’ll cover reasonable relocation costs!)

We:

• Work 70 hours/week in-person in SF (Marina/Russian Hill)
• Are growing rapidly and onboarding design partners. We grew 100% last month and expect to do it again.
• Have raised > 3M from YC, Pioneer Fund, and angels including Guillermo Rauch, Paul Klein, and .
• Believe you should make it run, make it right, make it fast. Our #1 goal is deliver value for developers. Refactor after patterns emerge

Our tech stack includes:

• Backend: Typescript, Hono, WorkOS, Golang, Rust
• Frontend: TypeScript, React, ORPC, Vite
• Infrastructure: AWS, Docker, Kubernetes, SST, GitHub Actions
• AI: For Harnesses, we Claude Code and Claude Code SDK, OpenCode server and we use pretty much every model provider at this point. Big BAML fans over here as well.

1. Video call intro
2. Take-home - open-ended
3. Follow-up on take-home; review over video call
4. On-site (full-day-ish) - whiteboarding, hands-on coding
5. Work Trial