Desktop Engineer

Job description

## About Town We're an applied AI company building a powerful assistant that makes it easy for anyone to create and use software in their everyday work. Town starts from who you are — it builds a persistent model of you (your voice, judgment, relationships, priorities) and does real work on your behalf across every tool you use: email, calendar, docs, Slack, CRM. It doesn't wait to be prompted. It observes, learns, and acts. We most recently raised a $55M Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Forerunner Ventures and continued support from First Round Capital, Alt Capital, and Conviction — plus angels including Adam D'Angelo, Soleio Cuervo, and Immad Akhund. ## About the role Town is most powerful when it's ambient — always there, aware of what you're working on, one keystroke away. The native macOS app is how that happens. We're looking for a Desktop Engineer to own Town's macOS client: a fast, deeply-integrated, always-on app that lives in your menu bar, understands the context around you, and acts the moment you need it. You'll own the native client end to end — architecture, OS integration, performance, and the release pipeline — and set the craft bar for what a Town desktop experience feels like. The bar is someone who has shipped a real Mac app that people loved to use, and sweats the details that make native software feel effortless. ## What you'll do - Build and own Town's native macOS app in Swift, SwiftUI, and AppKit — architecture, features, and polish. - Go deep on the OS: menu-bar and background agents, global shortcuts, notifications, EventKit, and the Accessibility APIs that let Town understand and act across other apps. - Make an always-on client that's genuinely fast and light — low memory, low battery, no jank. - Own the release pipeline: code signing, notarization, sandboxing/entitlements, crash reporting, and seamless auto-update. - Handle sensitive user data on-device with the security and privacy it deserves, in partnership with our security work. - Work closely with the backend and AI teams to bring Town's agent to the desktop natively. - Set the craft and performance bar for the desktop experience — and lay the groundwork for future platforms. ## You might thrive here if you... - Have extensive experience building native macOS (and/or iOS) applications, with depth in Swift. - Are fluent in both AppKit and SwiftUI and know when to reach for each. - Have worked below the UI layer: OS-level APIs, background processes, IPC/XPC, notifications, accessibility. - Care about performance and polish - Have shipped and owned a Mac app end to end, including signing, notarization, and updates. - Want to own a product surface from zero and move at startup speed doing it. ## ## Location In-person in San Francisco's Financial District, five days a week. Everyone is here to do their best work and make this product a success.