Founding Software Engineer (Product / AI) at Scout AI

About Scout AI

Our company

Scout AI is an AI tech startup company working at the intersection of hiring and upskilling. Our mission is to increase the average skill level of everyone on the planet by an order of magnitude, while bridging the disconnect between education, interviewing, and hiring.

We are a small and mighty team led by Christian Arredondo and Daniel Hernandez, based in the San Francisco Bay Area but globally distributed. We have several paying customers and recently raised our round of pre-seed funding from world class investors at Neo, where we are participating in their 2024 accelerator program from July - October.

While our core product is continuously evolving, we are focused on using AI to automate technical recruiting for companies by delivering growthful, enjoyable, real-world assessments for candidates at scale.

Our (initial) work norms

• Prioritize health and well-being
  • Make time for personal exercise & wellness
  • Take breaks when you need it
• Bring your best and whole self to work
  • Strive to be your best and authentic self, as it enables you to produce your best work
• Open communication and feedback
  • We value open communication and constructive feedback, as they help us grow and improve as a team
• Listen to diverse points of view
  • We welcome and value diverse perspectives, listening whole heartedly to understand different points of view
• Teamwork
  • Even when working on different tasks, we support each other’s work as a team
• 10x mentality
  • We try to go above and beyond to deliver 10x execution and 10x care for those we serve and to each other at every step of the way
• Think big
  • We are trying to make a positive dent in the universe, so we try to push each other to think big and bold–nothing is impossible!
• Move fast, and get sh*t done

• We try to move as quickly as we can to deliver the best results to our users and customers, and we embrace continuous improvement, which means we strive to not let “perfect” get in the way “done”

About the role

Scout’s success depends on building a dense, global network of companies and candidates, enabled by technology. As a Founding Software Engineer at Scout, you will design and build the next-generation hiring and assessment platform, starting with our MVP.

Our initial prototype and early tooling is built using a TypeScript stack on Microsoft Azure (NextJS, MongoDB, Docker, GitHub, OpenAI), but is very malleable :)

Responsibilities

• Design and build the core product and systems (web SaaS model)
• Support other areas of the company by building internal tools
• Track key product and company/candidate network metrics
• Occasionally participate in sales or candidate calls for first-hand user feedback

A day in the life

• Design and build a new core component/system of the product
• Monitor and maintain existing processes and tools
• Stay up to date on the latest GenAI best practices by reading an article or hacking something useful together
• Listen to feedback from the sales or community side, and brainstorm new ideas

Traits

• You care about others and want to build something that has a positive impact on people’s lives
• You are a strong communicator and enjoy collaborating with technical and non-technical team members
• You are inherently curious and enjoy learning new technologies and skills
• You enjoy tackling problems and challenges head-on, even if it’s outside your comfort zone
• You take full ownership of your tasks and strive to deliver your best work every day
• You want to make a positive dent in the universe

First 90 days

• Ramp up to Scout context (learnings, domain, goals, tech)
• Work closely with Christian and Daniel on technical design and building the product
• Support the company to acquire and retain next 10, 20, 50 customers, and help us get to 100K active job seekers
• Support company to raise seed round of funding in Q3/Q4

Qualifications

• Excellent technical and programming skills
• Excellent written and verbal communication
• Experience building 0-to-1 products
• Preferred: Experience in the education, community, or hiring space
• Preferred: Technical degree (CS, math, engineering, etc)
• Preferred: Experience working with ML / AI
• Preferred: 4+ years of software engineering experience, with a focus on product/full-stack
• Preferred: Dev ops or security experience
• You must have authorization to work in the country in which you intend to live (we cannot sponsor visas at this time)
• Your regular working hours must include some overlap with US/Pacific time

Reasons why you should *not* join

Beyond here be dragons 🐉.

Startups are inherently challenging endeavors. If any of the following items do not resonate with you, then this role may not be the best fit.

1. Risk: Startups are extremely difficult, and statistically the company will be dead within 2 years
2. Hard work: You will have a very high and complex workload at all times
3. Pressure: The entire company will depend on you for critical goals and milestones
4. Relentless iteration: Our product and/or direction may be completely different in 2 months based on learnings (while the mission remains the same)

Location and compensation

Location:

• In-person: San Francisco Bay Area, CA, US

• Remote: Americas (US, Canada, LATAM)

Compensation:

• This position is full-time and includes base salary + equity.