At nao Labs, we are reimagining how data work gets done. Data work is different from traditional software development, and it deserves a specialised workflow. That’s why we’re creating nao—an AI-powered code editor tailored for data workers.

Founding software engineer — Build the future of data teams experience.

Location: Paris 11, France

Hello, we're nao Labs

We are building an open-source AI agent for data analytics.

We are an early stage start-up with 2 cofounders - we joined Y Combinator Spring 2025 batch and STATION F and are now based in Paris 11.

We already have a first product - AI IDE for data people - used by 100+ data teams. We are now rolling out a new product - the open source analytics agent. So we’re looking for a founding engineer to help us build it!

We are a cofounding team with 18+ years experience in data/AI:

• Claire, our CEO, was Data Scientist at BCG Gamma, then head of data at sunday
• Christophe, our CTO, was staff Data Engineer at FreeNow, then worked as a freelance for Blablacar, Qonto. He then created his own blog and data community, blef.fr

We're looking for

As a founding engineer, you'll join us to inventing a new, better way to work on data with AI.

You will be a fit if...

• You’ve already built and shipped a real product end-to-end
• You have hands-on experience building agentic systems
• You have strong product instinct: you care about UX & design quality
• You want to join an early-stage startup and build tech and team from scratch
• You’re ready to work independently, ship fast and 80/20, make decisions, and own outcomes.
• As we will be a small team of 4 people, we like to have everyone bring the most they can to the product. So we’ll work as a team on tech/product roadmap, and you’ll be fully included in the sales/business strategy as well.

You will

• Own and build across the entire stack — frontend, backend, and AI features
• Design and ship core systems powering nao, including agentic workflows for data work and intuitive UIs for chat-based analytics
• Shape product roadmap by turning user feedback and company goals into technical and product decisions.
• Work in a small, fast-moving team, collaborating daily with the founders to invent how data teams use AI to work better and faster.
• Build the future of nao tech team with us

You are

• Entrepreneurial — ready to build, ship, and iterate fast
• Autonomous and curious — ready to learn constantly on the newest AI technologies
• Passionate for software engineering and interested in building open source tools.

Tech

The product uses these main technologies:

Front: React, Typescript

Back: node.js, Python

Agentic system: Vercel, OpenAI, Anthropic

Apply

Start Date: Flexible

Compensation: competitive salary + early equity

Location: Mainly on-site in our Paris 11 office. Remote available.

Join us at nao Labs and help shape the future of data work. Let’s build something incredible together!

nao is a fork of VS Code, which means NodeJS and Typescript.

We also use React for webviews. Python/Django and NodeJS for our backend APIs. A lot of LLMs to power our product.

The biggest challenges are:

• Navigating VS Code codebase to build a lovable product for data people
• Understand SQL and Python codebase to provide syntaxic trees
• Build low-latency AI Tab features and agentic workflows