Staff Software Engineer (New York)

Former CTO
Base salary: $200K to $300K plus equity
Location: New York, 4 days in person | Full time

The best startup problems are specific enough to see and important enough to matter. Here, the problem is how a city knows which road needs work next. Covington, Kentucky, is bringing the platform into pavement planning, and Alexandria, Kentucky, reports a major reduction in manual survey work. Bring founder-level judgment to the next customer problem and build the answer.

We are hiring for a company building the operating layer for the infrastructure cities maintain. Roads are the starting point: imagery, vehicle data, GIS records, engineering documents, and local knowledge become a living map of assets and their condition. Public works teams can use that evidence to plan capital, explain priorities, and manage work. The longer ambition reaches sidewalks, drainage, signs, bridges, and other public assets.

The product has customers, revenue, and funding, while the engineering choices that define the next phase are still open. You would join a world-class engineering team that includes a founding software engineer formerly at Brex and a machine learning engineer formerly at X, Google's moonshot factory.

What you'll own

Work directly with the founder and public works teams to decide what should exist, then build it. The role reaches from customer discovery and product strategy into interface, backend, data, and production support.

• Find the customer pain with the greatest operational and business value.
• Run quick tests before committing the team to a larger build.
• Ship software that connects evidence, condition, plans, and work.
• Create simple engineering habits that support speed and accountability.
  

Problems you'll solve

Cities vary in their records, budgets, and approval processes. You will identify what should become a repeatable product and what needs a careful local workflow, while keeping the evidence behind every recommendation visible.

Candidate fit

• You founded a company or owned broad scope at an early startup.
• You still love writing, reviewing, and debugging code.
• You can move from a customer conversation to production with a small team.
• You can work alongside the founder in New York in person 4 days per week.
  

Role details

• Base salary: $200K to $300K, plus founding team equity.
• Full time, New York, 4 days in person.
• Work directly with the founder and a small engineering team.
• Core stack: React, TypeScript, Mapbox, Express, geospatial data, and practical infrastructure.
• Visa sponsorship has not been confirmed; please ask if this affects your search.
  

Apply

Tell us about a product you personally shipped, the customer problem it solved, the technical decisions you owned, and what happened when people used it. We are especially interested in how you handled imperfect information and what you changed after launch.

Exclusively represented by ⚡dynamism

This search is led exclusively by ⚡dynamism, a community of exceptional builders, founders, and investors that includes YC alumni, Thiel Fellows, and AI lab researchers. We connect ambitious engineers with career-defining roles at breakout companies backed by leading funds including Y Combinator, a16z, and Sequoia.

Learn more at sfdynamism.com.

If you believe you’re a particularly strong fit, email Richard directly at View email address on apply.placed-app.com.