Software at YC

YC operates at massive scale, with a surprisingly small team. To do that, we write a lot of software.

You might have used some of YC's software products yourself, like Hacker News or Work at a Startup, which helps many YC founders hire their first employees.

But the public facing software is just the tip of the iceberg - most of the software we write is invisible to the outside world. We work on Bookface, YC's private social network, which most YC founders use every day. We also build the critical internal software that runs YC - including the software that lets us evaluate 100,000 applications every year and decide which startups to fund.

Over the past year, we've spent about half of our time working on AI agents. Most of what YC funds these days is AI companies, and we've leaned just as heavily into building our own AI software. We now have fully deployed agents that automate many important tasks - answering our customer support emails, managing our events, and helping us make sense of all the data flowing through our systems.

Working at YC means working on the cutting edge of AI - both in terms of the software we are writing ourselves and the companies we are working with every day.

What it's like to work at YC

The YC software team operates on the same advice we give to our startups. If you've watched YC videos or read Paul Graham's essays you'll already be familiar with our principles:

• Hire very slowly and keep your team as small as possible
• Avoid bureaucracy at all costs
• Stay close to your users and spend a lot of time with them
• Move fast and launch stuff as early as possible

The entire software team is about 15 full-stack product engineers. Engineers own projects end to end, including the product decisions, and talk directly to the users and key stakeholders. You'll know everyone you work with, and your decisions will matter. Our stack is straightforward (Rails, React, Postgres). What matters more is good judgment and the ability to see complex projects through to the finish line.

Get full access to YC

As an engineer at YC, you're at the center of the startup ecosystem. We work out of a beautiful, spacious campus at Pier 70 in San Francisco's Dogpatch neighborhood. It was formerly a shipyard and one of the city's largest industrial sites during the World Wars. It's now the center of the AI revolution with OpenAI two blocks away and most of the YC founders within walking distance.

With four batches a year, the office is always buzzing with founders. As an engineer at YC, you're encouraged to attend the same events we run for YC founders, which happen just downstairs. There are interesting people hanging out downstairs almost every day - from guest speakers like Sam Altman, Brian Chesky, and Greg Brockman to Demo Day with the who's who of Silicon Valley investors, and endless happy hours, end-of-batch parties, and more.

One of the things that makes this job unusual is that a lot of the most important people in silicon valley use our software daily - including YC partners, investors, and successful founders. That means you get to talk directly with your most important users - sometimes just by running into them in the hallway.

Many people on the software team have founded companies or plan to. In recent years, eight former YC engineers have gone on to start YC-funded startups. Working at YC is a good way to get exposure to the startup world before starting your own company, and anyone who works here has the inside track to getting funded for their own company if they decide to become a founder.

Get in touch

YC offers highly competitive compensation and benefits, including equity in YC's portfolio. If you're interested in joining us, email software@ycombinator.com with a brief note about yourself and what you'd want to build.