Software Engineer

Y/n; California (MO); On-site; USD 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

Y/n is seeking an early engineer to help build our personalized recommendation system and develop features for our mobile and web applications. As one of our first engineers, you'll have significant ownership across product and infrastructure at our rapidly growing startup in California.

We're looking for candidates who have experience in infrastructure and startups, and a passion for fandom, reading, games, or fanfiction. Willingness to relocate to San Francisco is essential, and assistance with US work authorization may be provided.

Qualifications

• Proven experience in building actual infrastructure.
• Experience working at a startup or on meaningful projects.
• Willingness to relocate to San Francisco with potential work authorization support.

Responsibilities

• Build personalized recommendation system infrastructure.
• Develop features for mobile and web applications.

Skills

Building infrastructure

Experience in a startup

Interest in fandom, reading, games, or fanfiction

Job description

Hi, my name is Gabriel and I'm the co-founder of Y/n.

Y/n is an app where you play the main character in a story written for you. Be the new kid at a boarding school and get everyone to fall for you, or plan a jailbreak with Sherlock Holmes. Every text you send changes the plot and how characters feel about you, so no two playthroughs are the same.

Our mission at Y/n is to create the most entertaining storyteller in the world, and give it to everyone.

Why you should join us

• People love Y/n:
  • Users spend on average 3+ hours playing Y/n everyday
  • We are top #10 books apps in the world (reached #4 app in the App Store last month), even though we just launched
  • We raised $14M from top VCs
• We work on interesting technical problems:
  • We serve ~3T tokens (~300M user messages, growing 40% MoM) per month with a team of 4
  • We manage a LOT of compute!
  • Training an AI to be fun and creative is incredibly interesting
• The founders + team are fun to work with:
  • My co-founder Eric trained the first‑ever image editing AI in the world
  • Before Y/n, I was the founding designer and one of the first employees at Substack, where I learned a lot about product and media
  • Together, we previously co‑founded Can of Soup, a hit AI image sharing app, which you can read about in the New York Times

Some examples of what you would do

You'd be one of our first engineers, with real ownership across the product and the infrastructure. In practice that could mean:

• Building our personalized recommendation system infrastructure
• Building features in our mobile and web application

The role will adapt and grow as we do, so don’t worry if you haven’t worked on recommender systems or ML yet!

What we’re looking for

• You’ve built actual infrastructure (not just pushed to Vercel)
• You’ve worked at a startup or built meaningful side projects
• Optional: you’re into fandom, reading, games, or fanfiction!
• You're willing to relocate to San Francisco. If you do not have US work authorization, we can help with that