Proliferate (YC S25) is hiring to building open source Codex
Source: Hacker News
About Proliferate
Proliferate is building the operating system for modern engineering.
We are building the company in person in SoMa, San Francisco. We care a lot about intensity, craft, and working with people who want to do the best work of their careers. We work hard, and we also take health seriously: company-expensed Whoop, meaningful health and wellness budget, and top-tier insurance.
About the Founder
I (Pablo) finished my master’s in AI at 19 and joined Onyx (YC W24) as engineer #1, where I spent a year building enterprise AI search before starting Proliferate. You can see what I shipped there here. We’ll be working closely together.
About the Role
You’d be one of our first engineering hires and build the core product. This is a high-ownership role across product, systems, and user experience.
Example work:
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Build a new core workflow end to end across agent runtime, product UI, and cloud infrastructure.
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Design and ship a new interface for human-agent collaboration made possible by a model capability that landed last week.
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Turn a rough customer pain point into a polished product surface in days.
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Re-think how engineering teams review, redirect, and trust agent work before merge.
Who We’re Looking For
We have an extremely small, flat, talent-dense team. We value urgency, taste, truth-seeking, and people who care deeply about the quality and impact of their work.
You might be a great fit if:
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You’ve shipped products from 0 to 1
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You want a role that is unusually dense in learning, ownership, and pace
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You want to work with teammates who have very high standards
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You care deeply about what you build and who you build it with
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You want to do your life’s work and enable other people to do theirs
Stack
TypeScript, React, Next.js, Python, Postgres, Redis, AWS, Rust
Comp & Benefits
Top-of-market salary plus meaningful equity, full health/dental/vision, all meals covered, equipment budget, and a monthly health and wellness stipend.
Interview Process
1. Initial questions (3 minutes)
4 short questions through Work at a Startup. Emphasis on short! Should be around 3 sentences max per answer
2. Phone call with Pablo (15 minutes)
A quick call to get to know each other
3. Technical round (30 minutes)
We’ll talk through a technical problem together with a codebase open on your end
4. Work trial (1-3 days, $1-3K)
Come to our office by Salesforce Park in SF and we’ll try working together. If this isn’t possible due to extenuating circumstances, we can make accommodations
5. References + Offer