Founding Full Stack Engineer, AI Incubation

Matchgroup; Los Angeles (CA); Hybrid; USD 190,000 - 270,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Mind & Body benefits

Financial Wellness

Unplug: PTO & holidays

Career development allowance

Family benefits & parental leave

Company gatherings

Job summary

Match Group is forming an internal AI Incubation team to redefine dating experiences with AI-native systems. We are seeking a hands-on, high-ownership founding engineer to own the initiative, build quickly, and guide early product thesis into a working product.

You’ll work on core experiences users rely on to discover, evaluate, and build meaningful connections, identifying friction and rethinking AI-driven personalization at scale.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of software engineering experience in senior, staff, or founding roles.
• Track record shipping consumer products in fast-moving environments, zero-to-one or early-stage contexts.
• Deep full-stack capabilities across product surfaces, backend, data, infra, and production ops.
• Experience with mobile development using React Native, Swift, Kotlin, Flutter, or similar.
• Experience with modern AI development workflows and AI-powered products used by real users.
• High technical judgment on reliability, privacy, security, observability and scale.
• Strong communication and ability to partner with product, design, research, and leadership.
• Ownership mindset to operate with limited teams and fixed roadmaps.
• Judgment around consumer trust, identity, privacy, and emotionally personal user experiences.

Responsibilities

• Build end-to-end product experiences spanning frontend, backend, agent workflows, cloud infra, integrations, and internal tooling.
• Design AI-powered systems to infer user intent, personalize recommendations, and improve via feedback.
• Partner with product, design, and research to rapidly translate insights into prototypes and pilots.
• Use frontier AI tools and modern workflows while ensuring reliability, privacy, and scalability.
• Instrument product with analytics, event tracking, dashboards, and experimentation tools.
• Improve reliability, observability, scalability, and performance of systems you build.
• Define early system architecture and technical roadmap; act as strategic technical partner to leadership.

Skills

Staff/Principal level leadership

Consumer product shipping

Full-stack engineering

Mobile development

AI development workflows

Reliability & security judgment

Clear communication

Ownership mindset

Privacy & trust awareness

Job description

Know where you belong! Match Group is a leading provider of dating products across the globe. Our portfolio includes Tinder, Hinge, Match, Meetic, PlentyOfFish, OkCupid, The League, HER, and others, each designed to spark meaningful connections for singles worldwide. Creating a sense of belonging doesn’t stop at our products - it’s the foundation of every team we hire.

When it comes to dating, the connection starts online, but the real magic happens once you meet in real life (IRL). We think the same is true for creating the best platforms, so we work together IRL 3 days/week.

At Match Group, our mission is to spark meaningful connections for every single person worldwide. Across our portfolio of trusted brands, we help millions of people discover, connect, date, and build relationships in ways that reflect their identities, intentions, cultures, and communities.

We work together to solve complex problems at the intersection of human connection, behavioral science, network economics, AI and ML, safety, privacy, cultural nuance, loneliness, love, sex, and relationships.

As the world’s leading portfolio of dating products, Match Group has a unique opportunity to imagine what comes next for dating — including how emerging technologies can help people feel more understood, more intentional, and more confident as they connect.

The Team

Match Group is building an internal incubation focused on AI-powered dating experiences to redefine the category.

Dating is a deeply human experience, but many of today’s products were built before AI could understand context, intent, nuance, and feedback at scale. We believe there is an opportunity to rethink parts of the dating experience from first principles, combining strong consumer product craft with AI-native systems that help people connect with more confidence, clarity, and trust.

This team will operate like a small startup inside Match Group. We are moving from product hypothesis to prototype to pilot, with the goal of learning quickly from real users and identifying whether there is a new product opportunity that can scale.

We’re looking for aFounding Full Stack Engineer, AI Incubation to be the technical owner for this initiative.

This is a hands-on, high-ownership role for a Staff/Principal-level engineering leader who can build quickly, make strong technical decisions, and help turn an early product thesis into a working product.

You’ll work directly on the core experiences users rely on to discover, evaluate, and build meaningful connections. You’ll identify where today’s dating experiences create friction, ambiguity, or low-quality outcomes, and rethink how AI can help create a more useful, trusted, and personalized experience.

You should be excited by zero-to-one product building: taking an ambiguous opportunity, defining the fastest path to learning, building the first version, putting it in front of users, and iterating based on real behavior.

• Build end-to-end product experiences that span frontend applications, backend services, agent workflows, cloud infrastructure, integrations, and internal tooling.
• Design AI-powered systems that help the product understand user intent, reason about compatibility, personalize recommendations, and improve through feedback over time.
• Partner closely with product, design, and research to rapidly translate insights into prototypes, pilots, and production-ready features.
• Use frontier AI tools and modern engineering workflows to compress the path from idea to working product, while maintaining strong technical judgment around reliability, privacy, and scale.
• Instrument the product with analytics, event tracking, dashboards, and experimentation tools so the team can evaluate engagement, retention, quality, and product-market signal.
• Improve the reliability, observability, scalability, and performance of the systems and workflows you build.
• Define the early system architecture and technical roadmap, and serve as a strategic technical thought partner to Match Group leadership.

• 8+ years of software engineering experience, including experience operating at Staff, Principal, founding engineer, technical lead, or equivalent level.
• A track record of building and shipping consumer products in fast-moving environments, ideally across zero-to-one, early-stage, or startup contexts.
• Deep full-stack technical range, with the ability to move independently across product surfaces, backend systems, data architecture, infrastructure, and production operations.
• Experience with mobile development using React Native, Swift, Kotlin, Flutter, or similar technologies.
• Experience working with modern AI development workflows and practical experience building AI-powered products used by real users
• High technical judgment around reliability, privacy, security, observability, maintainability, and scale.
• Clear communication skills and the ability to serve as a trusted technical partner to product, design, research, engineering, and senior leadership.
• Strong ownership mindset, with the ability to operate without a large team, detailed specs, or fixed roadmap.
• High judgment around consumer trust, identity, privacy, and emotionally personal user experiences.

• Experience in dating, social discovery, consumer social, messaging, marketplaces, creator platforms, gaming, community products, or subscription-based consumer products.
• Experience building AI-native consumer products or AI-powered features used by real users.
• Experience with recommendation systems, ranking systems, personalization, matching, marketplace liquidity, network effects, or consumer discovery systems.
• Prior experience as a founder, founding engineer, early startup employee, or zero-to-one product builder.

Our Values

• Take the Lead:We don't ghost our work or each other. Just as users don't leave their matches hanging, we don't let each other down.
• Move Fast:We have a bias for action and urgency. Something that could be done tomorrow would be better if done today.
• Better Together:We keep connection at the heart of dating and at the heart of how we work. Just as our users are better when they connect with others, so are we when we collaborate.
• Real Talk:We say the hard thing the human way. Just as we ask our users to behave with kindness and candor in our community, we expect all of us to do the same.
• Safety First:We act with integrity, transparency, and consistency so people feel safe—whether they’re swiping, matching, or working alongside us.
• Spark Fun:We have fun to unlock creativity, fuel innovation, and help us build better experiences for daters.

Why Match Group?

Our mission is simple – to help people find love and happiness! We love our employees too and understand the importance of all life's milestones. Here are some of the benefits we are proud to offer:

• Mind & Body– Medical, mental health, and wellness benefits to support your overall health and well-being
• Financial Wellness– Competitive compensation, 100% employer match on 401k contributions up to 10% (cap at $10,000), as well as an employee stock purchase program to help you feel supported in your financial security
• Unplug– Generous PTO and 14 paid holidays so you can unplug
• Career– Annual training allowance for professional development and ERG membership opportunities and events so you feel connected and empowered in your work
• Family– Families come in all shapes and sizes so we offer 20 weeks of 100% paid parental leave, fertility, adoption, and child care resources, as well as pet insurance and discounts
• Company Gatherings– We host company events where our employees get to know each other and build a sense of connection and belonging!

We are proud to be an equal opportunity employer and we value the rich dynamics that diversity brings to our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, creed, national origin, ancestry, disability, marital status, age, sexual orientation, sex (including pregnancy and sexual harassment), gender identity or expression, uniformed service or veteran status, genetic information, or any other legally protected characteristic. Period.

If you require a reasonable accommodation to participate in the hiring process — such as during pre-employment testing or interviews — please indicate this by selecting “Yes” in the accommodation request field. We’ll reach out to discuss your needs if you're selected for the interview stage.

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