Principal Software Engineer

Role Description

Great zero-to-one builders are becoming more careful about where to spend their next years. AI is opening a rare company-creation window, with unusual room for new ventures to emerge fast. But that does not make great opportunities easier to find. And it definitely does not make great products easier to build.

Once you’ve done real zero-to-one work, you know the risk is not just failure. It is spending your next years on something that was never real enough to deserve them. Gitwit was built to find problems worth solving. We are an AI-first venture studio built to win this moment through systematic exploration, ruthless validation, and fast cross-functional building.

Over the last few years, we've launched products including:

• An AI report-writing platform for psychologists
• An AI troubleshooting platform for manufacturers
• AI-powered workflow tools for operators in complex industries

We plan to launch more than a dozen new AI-native ventures over the next several years. This role is for the kind of engineer who already knows the difference: someone who cares as much about what should be built as how to build it, and who wants the real version of ownership.

In this role, you will help turn raw opportunities into real products at the heart of new venture creation. You will be involved early, when the questions are still open, the signal is still forming, and the right move is not always obvious. Most of the ventures we create are software products, typically full-stack web applications with AI functionality at their core.

Your work will include:

• Shaping products from the beginning
• Helping define what should be built, what should wait, and what should be cut before time gets wasted
• Building from zero and shipping fast
• Taking ideas from early concept to prototype to real product in users’ hands, often in days, not months
• Seeing your work in the wild immediately
• Making foundational technical decisions
• Choosing the right tools, architecture, and tradeoffs for the stage
• Working close to the truth
• Learning directly from users, pressure-testing assumptions, and adjusting quickly
• Building across the full product reality
• Operating at a pace that keeps things fun
• Helping shape ventures, not just software

Qualifications

• Experience in meaningful zero-to-one work
• Ability to shape product, technical, and execution decisions
• Experience as an early engineer at a startup or building a new product/system from scratch
• Strong technical judgment and ability to make sound architectural and tooling decisions
• Experience designing and shipping full-stack applications using modern frameworks
• Experience with AI-native product experiences
• Voracious learner with sharp judgment about emerging technology
• Ability to work as part of a real venture team
• Desire for real ownership over what gets built

Requirements

• Experience with TypeScript across the stack
• Familiarity with React and modern frontend frameworks
• Experience with Node.js backend services
• Knowledge of PostgreSQL and cloud-native infrastructure
• Experience with OpenAI, Anthropic, and other foundation model APIs
• Understanding of AI orchestration, retrieval systems, and workflow automation

Benefits

• Competitive salary
• Meaningful equity in every venture the studio builds
• 8 weeks of PTO
• Excellent health, vision, and dental insurance, with 99% of employee premiums paid
• 401(k) with 4% match
• Life insurance
• Paid parental leave
• Cell phone reimbursement
• High-trust, high-autonomy culture
• Remote-first collaboration with occasional in-person team gatherings