Careers at Y Combinator

Working at Y Combinator is a unique opportunity to help founders build their companies at all stages, and offers unprecedented insight into the greater startup ecosystem. See open positions below across our software, investment and operations teams. If you'd prefer to work at a startup, you can find 5813 roles at YC startups in engineering, design, recruiting and more atycombinator.com/jobs. 16Back to job listings

Product Engineer, Applications Operations

Location San Francisco, CA, US Employment Type Full-time Department Engineering Compensation $185K - $485K Visa Sponsorship US citizen/visa only

Overview

Application

Y Combinator is hiring a full-stack product engineer to work at the center of how YC operates 1 from the application pipeline to events and internal tools. This role sits at the intersection of engineering, product, and operations. You
9ll spend most of your time building production software for both internal teams and founders, while also helping design and improve the processes those tools support. At its core, this role is about turning operational complexity into well-designed software. We don
9t have traditional PMs or designers. Engineers own the product experience end-to-end 1 from understanding the problem to designing the UI to shipping the system. The right person is excited to create their own interfaces, workflows, and user experiences, not just implement someone else
9s specs.

What You
9ll Do

Product & Engineering (Core)

• Design, build, and ship full-stack applications powering YC
  9s admissions pipeline, events platform, and internal tools
• Develop and extend YC
  9s events platform (Demo Day, meetups, recruiting events,... office hours,... investor events), including registration,... coordination,... media handling
• Integrate with external systems (Google Calendar,... Slack,... email,... data pipelines) to coordinate internal teams,... external founders... more
• Build deep AI and search systems (semantic search,... embeddings,... natural language queries) across large datasets
• Make pragmatic engineering tradeoffs in a fast-moving environment

Process & Automation

• Build systems that automate YC
  9s admissions workflow (scheduling,... notifications,... status tracking,... email triage,... deadlines)
• Improve how applications are routed,... interviews are coordinated,... information is surfaced to partners
• Develop internal tools and copilots using LLMs (email classification,... workflow automation,... natural language interfaces)
• Eliminate manual work so the team can focus on high-leverage decisions

Operations & Decision Support

• Work directly with partners and ops teams to understand workflows and build better systems
• Create dashboards and analytics to track pipeline health and operational metrics
• Contribute to process improvements during admissions cycles

Who This Is For

This role is ideal if you:

• Are a strong full-stack,... product-minded engineer who enjoys owning products,... not just code
• Love using AI in your work -- your dev stack is fully AI-enabled... you've built AI-enabled products or prototypes
• Like turning messy,... high-stakes workflows into clean,... usable systems
• Want to make product... UX decisions directly,... without waiting on PMs or designers
• Are low-ego... comfortable getting along with everyone in our... company
• Are comfortable with ambiguity... making tradeoffs

Backgrounds That Tend to Succeed

• Product-minded engineers who’ve built internal tools or workflow systems end-to-end
• Engineers with experience in building full stack applications or workflow software
• Former founders or early-stage startup engineers
• Engineers who have owned both backend systems... frontend/user experience

What We’re Looking For

Required

• Experience shipping full-stack web applications
• Strong system design... independent decision-making
• Strong product sense... comfort designing user experiences
• Ability to work directly with non-technical stakeholders
• Clear communication skills
• High judgment... integrity

Nice to Have

• Experience with Rails,... React,... Postgres (or similar)
• LLMs,... prompt engineering,... agent-based systems
• Workflow automation or integration-heavy systems
• Founder or early-stage experience

We care more about your ability to build... ship complete products than any specific stack.

How We Work

YC operates with a small,... high-trust team. There are no rigid roadmaps or handoffs between product,... design,... engineering — engineers are expected to use judgment,... talk to users,... build the right thing. You’ll work closely with partners... founders on high-impact problems... be responsible for the full experience... not just implementation.

Details

• Location: San Francisco Bay Area (or willing to relocate)
• Compensation: $185K–$485K base + profit-sharing (comparable to startup equity or VC carry)
• Benefits: Medical,... dental,... vision,...401(k)...4% match,.. parental leave,.. flexible PTO,.. more

Work Authorization...

y Combinator willing sponsor certain employment visas... y Combinator considers qualified applicants with criminal histories... y Combinator committed protecting privacy... y Combinator privacy policy Ashby Inc... hiring platform used by Y Combinator governs collection data found here.