### Our Company
MindPals bridges the gap between a student’s passions and their journey toward
college and beyond. We provide personalized resources and guidance for high
school students and their parents, guiding them through the ever-changing
world of post-secondary education and career choices.
MindPals is a pre-seed startup, currently iterating on our minimum-lovable-
product. Our co-founders Jing Jin (CEO) and Jonathan Tzou (COO) are
experienced founders and educators. Jing studied Computer Science at Carnegie
Mellon University, was a software engineer at Apple, founded Literator (used
in 4,000 schools), and led design at Outschool (serving 1MM kids globally).
Jonathan studied at UPenn, tutored teens for over 15 years, and has previously
founded and sold another startup.
### Your Role
As our full-stack Founding Engineer, you'll be a key player in our initial
team of three, thriving in the ground-zero phase of our startup journey.
You'll partner closely with the founders to craft software solutions that
resonate with the needs of students and parents. You'll have the reins of our
technical domain and lay the foundation for our engineering team's growth.
This is a contract-to-hire role. You will start as a part-time contractor with
cash compensation for 2-3 months, then if it’s a good fit, convert to full-
time with equity compensation and additional benefits.
### Responsibilities
* Collaborate with the founders, and both technical and non-technical teammates, in building products for teens, parents, and educators
* Develop and maintain our entire software stack—from web and mobile front-end, to AI architecture, to backend infrastructure
* Lay the foundation for scaling our engineering team
### Experience & Skills
* 5+ years of engineering experience with front and backend technologies (e.g. React, SQL, etc.)
* 1+ years of experience creating applications with LLMs
* Been an early engineer at a startup
* A history of leading technical projects alongside non-tech peers
### A Day in the Life
Here is what a day might look like for you:
* Retro & sprint planning with team
* Implement a new feature we’ll be testing for user feedback in the next sprint
* Go out for lunch with everyone, if it’s an in-office day
* Watch a user interview about the last feature we shipped
* Discuss with Jing a new architecture that improves how we use AI
* Slack Jonathan to sanity-check improved AI responses
* More coding
### Principles We Follow
* **Help each other learn** \- We believe in learning together and learning through rapid iteration. We see mistakes as part of learning, and consider learning from mistakes, and sharing that learning, as essential as fixing the mistakes.
* **Don’t assume** \- We don’t just complete the tasks we set out, but think proactively about why they’re important, and what we can do next to serve that “why”. We’re forward-thinking and value rigor–from understanding student and parent needs, to addressing edge cases, to closing the loop with internal and external stakeholders.
* **Remember the customer** \- We understand that the purpose of any company is to solve a problem for the customers, who may have very different perspectives. Our top priority is to provide solutions to the customers’ wide range of backgrounds and needs, even if the form factor or scalability is something we must iterate on later.
### What We Offer
* Contract: $50-$150 hourly rate
* Full-time: $100K-$200K salary and 0.5%-2% equity
* A major influence in setting the standard for both the engineering team and the company
* Opportunity to grow with the company, potentially to senior leadership if skills and needs align
* Unlimited PTO
* Flexible location—work remotely or join us hybrid in San Francisco. We value in-person interactions and organize regular off-sites to strengthen team connections and celebrate our milestones
MindPals focuses on Education, Artificial Intelligence, and Education
Technology. Their company has offices in San Francisco and Remote. They have a
small team that's between 1-10 employees.
You can view their website at <https://mindpals.com>
