Y Combinator has a small ~12 person team that makes the software that runs YC. Hardly any investors write software, but YC was started by programmers so it's natural for us to solve our problems that way. We believe our software is a key competitive advantage and we are investing aggressively in new software products.

As a member of the software team, you'll get full access to the YC program, just like founders do. You'll learn the ins and outs of how YC works, and you'll get to follow and learn from hundreds of companies. You'll meet some of the most successful people in the startup world and get exposed to the best startup ideas. And of course, if you ever want to start your own company, you’ll learn a lot about that from working at YC.

Y Combinator is looking for a full-stack product engineer who also wants to apply their skills to investing, diligence, and founder support. This role sits at the intersection of engineering, product, and investing. You will spend much of your time writing production code — building internal and founder-facing tools — while also contributing directly to company evaluation and investment decisions.

This is not two jobs stitched together. The core of the role is turning judgment into software: using code to improve how YC evaluates companies, supports founders, and scales its impact after the batch.

What you'll do:

• Product & Engineering (core responsibility)

• Investing & Analysis

This role is ideal for someone who:

• Is a strong full-stack engineer and enjoys owning production software

• Likes talking to users and senior stakeholders to decide what to build

• Is curious about investing and wants hands-on exposure

• Prefers ownership and impact over narrowly scoped tickets

• Is energized by ambiguity and comfortable making tradeoffs

• Can translate ambiguous questions into concrete products, systems, or analyses

Successful candidates have been:

• Former founders or early-stage engineers

• Product-minded engineers who've worked closely with business or finance teams

• Engineers with prior exposure to investing, finance, or company analysis

What we're looking for:

• Required

• Not required, but helpful

How we work: YC operates with a small, high-trust team. Roadmaps evolve organically, priorities shift quickly, and people are expected to use good judgment rather than wait for perfect specs. Engineers have real autonomy and work closely with partners and founders to build things that matter.

Location: Based in the San Francisco Bay Area (or willing to relocate)

Compensation: $250K to $500K base salary, depending on experience. YC has a profit-sharing program, which is comparable to equity in an early-stage startup or carry in a VC fund.

Benefits: Our full benefits package includes medical, vision, and dental plans, infertility benefit, STD/LTD, life insurance, commuter benefits, flexible spending account, health savings account, 401(k) + 4% matching, generous parental leave, paid holidays, and flexible paid time off policy.

Important Note: This role is not a fit if you're looking for:

• A pure investing or finance role with little hands-on building

• A pure engineering role with tightly defined specs and limited product ownership

• A highly structured environment with rigid roadmaps

Work Authorization: Y Combinator is willing to sponsor certain employment visas in accordance with company policy.

Legal note: Y Combinator considers qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state, and local law, including San Francisco’s Fair Chance Ordinance. Y Combinator is committed to protecting the privacy of the personal information of job applicants and complying with the California Consumer Privacy Act. The privacy policy of Ashby, Inc., the hiring platform used by Y Combinator, governs the collection of such data and can be found here.

The YC internal software is mostly written in Ruby on Rails and React. It runs on AWS and PostgreSQL. Previous experience developing web apps will be helpful, but we don't care if you've used React or Rails specifically.

Note: Hacker News is written in Lisp, but Hacker News is run by a separate team.