Founding Engineer (Full Stack Web) (San Francisco)

Base Pay Range

$150,000 ÷ $215,000 per year

Our Company

Pax Historia is an alternate‑history sandbox game where players choose a country, a moment in time, and rewrite history. What if Rome never fell? What if the Soviet Union survived? What if Genghis Khan ruled for another generation? We’re backed by Y Combinator, Pace Capital, and Z Fellows, have seen nearly 20 million rounds played, and are growing quickly. Your work will immediately ship to a product used by hundreds of thousands of players.

Culture

Most players discover Pax Historia organically (friends, YouTube reviews) and stay because we truly care about the game we’re building. We want every employee to care deeply about our product. History nerds are especially welcome; if you can articulate why you’d be excited to work on our game, we’d love to hear from you. Pax Historia is still an extremely small company, so you’ll work directly with the co‑founders and a few other employees. Self‑driven, team‑player, and willing to advocate for your ideas. The co‑founders will not hand‑hold: their leadership strategy is to ‘get out of the way’ of employees to let them do their best work. Finally, flexibility is also very important. Since we scale rapidly with a small team, you should come to work willing to help solve a variety of problems on the fly.

The Role

We need a web developer to work in‑person full‑time in San Francisco (Dogpatch). You will report directly to the co‑founders. This is an intensive role and you should expect to work around 50–60 hours per week for the first few months; after that, hours may begin to decrease. There is potential for slight flexibility (e.g., 1 day/week hybrid) but we have a strong preference for candidates who can commit to in‑person work. The exact timing of the hours you work is flexible.

As a web developer, you will primarily be responsible for helping us build and improve the customer experience of paxhistoria.co. In addition, since we are still a very small team, you should expect to frequently help with other ad‑hoc projects as needed. This is not a static role!

Your Qualifications

We are not hiring for a particular degree or number of years of experience. That said, you should be extremely comfortable with cross‑functional full‑stack development. Think through problems, create workable solutions, and debug complex code on your own.

Tools Experience (Ideally)

• Next.js
• TypeScript
• Firestore
• Supabase
• R2

Experience with the above tools is not a must, but would strengthen any application. Please be ready to provide evidence of your technical skills (by submitting a portfolio and potentially completing an OA).

Compensation

Salary range is $150,000–$215,000 depending on your relevant qualifications and experience.

Selected candidates can expect to receive 0.25 %–1 % equity. Vesting schedule is a 12‑month cliff and 4‑year monthly vesting. We will also be offering a non‑matching 401(k) plan.

Application Process

Please submit your application here. If you’re selected to continue in the application process, we will email you by the end of Jan to set up an interview and/or OA.

This job listing is for a W‑2 employee opportunity. We are unfortunately unable to sponsor visas (other than O1) at this time. Pax Historia is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, age, disability, or veteran status.