Job Description
YC operates at massive scale, with a surprisingly small team. To do that, we write a lot of software.You might have used some of YC's software products yourself, like Hacker News or Work at a Startup, which helps many YC founders hire their first employees.But the public facing software is just the tip of the iceberg - most of the software we write is invisible to the outside world. We work on Bookface, YC's private social network, which most YC founders use every day. We also build the critical internal software that runs YC - including the software that lets us evaluate 100,000 applications every year and decide which startups to fund.Over the past year, we've spent about half of our time working on AI agents. Most of what YC funds these days is AI companies, and we've leaned just as heavily into building our own AI software. We now have fully deployed agents that automate many important tasks - answering our customer support emails, managing our events, and helping us make sense of all the data flowing through our systems.Working at YC means working on the cutting edge of AI - both in terms of the software we are writing ourselves and the companies we are working with every day.What it's like to work at YCThe YC software team operates on the same advice we give to our startups. If you've watched YC videos or read Paul Graham's essays you'll already be familiar with our principles:Hire very slowly and keep your team as small as possibleAvoid bureaucracy at all costsStay close to your users and spend a lot of time with themMove fast and launch stuff as early as possibleThe entire software team is about 15 full-stack product engineers. Engineers own projects end to end, including the product decisions, and talk directly to the users and key stakeholders. You'll know everyone you work with, and your decisions will matter. Our stack is straightforward (Rails, React, Postgres). What matters more is good judgment and the ability to see complex projects through to the finish line.