Product Engineer, Applications Operations

Job description

Y Combinator is hiring a full-stack product engineer to work at the center of how YC operates — from the application pipeline to events and internal tools. This role sits at the intersection of engineering, product, and operations. You’ll spend most of your time building production software for both internal teams and founders, while also helping design and improve the processes those tools support. At its core, this role is about turning operational complexity into well-designed software. We don’t have traditional PMs or designers. Engineers own the product experience end-to-end — from understanding the problem to designing the UI to shipping the system. The right person is excited to create their own interfaces, workflows, and user experiences, not just implement someone else’s specs. WHAT YOU’LL DO Product & Engineering (Core) - Design, build, and ship full-stack applications powering YC’s admissions pipeline, events platform, and internal tools - Develop and extend YC’s events platform (Demo Day, meetups, recruiting events, office hours, investor events), including registration, coordination, and media handling - Integrate with external systems (Google Calendar, Slack, email, data pipelines) to coordinate internal teams, external founders and more - Build deep AI and search systems (semantic search, embeddings, natural language queries) across large datasets - Make pragmatic engineering tradeoffs in a fast-moving environment Process & Automation - Build systems that automate YC’s admissions workflow (scheduling, notifications, status tracking, email triage, deadlines) - Improve how applications are routed, interviews are coordinated, and information is surfaced to partners - Develop internal tools and copilots using LLMs (email classification, workflow automation, natural language interfaces) - Eliminate manual work so the team can focus on high-leverage decisions OPERATIONS & DECISION SUPPORT - Work directly with partners and ops teams to understand workflows and build better systems - Create dashboards and analytics to track pipeline health and operational metrics - Contribute to process improvements during admissions cycles WHO THIS IS FOR This role is ideal if you: - Are a strong full-stack, product-minded engineer who enjoys owning products, not just code - Love using AI in your work -- your dev stack is fully AI-enabled and you've built AI-enabled products or prototypes - Like turning messy, high-stakes workflows into clean, usable systems - Want to make product and UX decisions directly, without waiting on PMs or designers - Are low-ego and comfortable getting along with everyone in our 100-person company - Are comfortable with ambiguity and making tradeoffs BACKGROUNDS THAT TEND TO SUCCEED - Product-minded engineers who’ve built internal tools or workflow systems end-to-end - Engineers with experience in building full stack applications or workflow software - Former founders or early-stage startup engineers - Engineers who have owned both backend systems and frontend/user experience WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR Required - Experience shipping full-stack web applications - Strong system design and independent decision-making - Strong product sense and comfort designing user experiences - Ability to work directly with non-technical stakeholders - Clear communication skills - High judgment and integrity Nice to Have - Experience with Rails, React, Postgres (or similar) - LLMs, prompt engineering, or agent-based systems - Workflow automation or integration-heavy systems - Founder or early-stage experience We care more about your ability to build and ship complete products than any specific stack. HOW WE WORK YC operates with a small, high-trust team. There are no rigid roadmaps or handoffs between product, design, and engineering — engineers are expected to use judgment, talk to users, and build the right thing. You’ll work closely with partners and founders on high-impact problems and be responsible for the full experience, not just the implementation. DETAILS - Location: San Francisco Bay Area (or willing to relocate) - Compensation: $250K–$500K base + profit-sharing (comparable to startup equity or VC carry) - Benefits: Medical, dental, vision, 401(k) + 4% match, parental leave, flexible PTO, and more 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.