Y Combinator has a small ~12 person team that makes the software that runs YC. Hardly any investors write software, but YC was started by programmers so it's natural for us to solve our problems that way. We believe our software is a key competitive advantage and we are investing aggressively in new software products.

As a member of the software team, you'll get full access to the YC program, just like founders do. You'll learn the ins and outs of how YC works, and you'll get to follow and learn from hundreds of companies. You'll meet some of the most successful people in the startup world and get exposed to the best startup ideas. And of course, if you ever want to start your own company, you’ll learn a lot about that from working at YC.

Y Combinator is run by a small team that is committed to helping founders start the next Airbnb, Stripe, Reddit or Doordash.  We work out of the same campus in San Francisco that we run the batch in.  We also operate according to the same principles we teach our startups - so if you've read Paul Graham's essays or watched our videos on YouTube, you can already predict what it would be like to work here.  

Working at YC places you in the center of the startup world.

About the role

To manage the YC program at scale, we write lots of software. The Bookface team specifically focuses on building YC’s most critical tools to help founders through the batch – and well afterwards. Some projects we’re working on:

• Bookface. Software that helps operate and manage the day-to-day batch, including event programming, office hours, pitch prep and more. Every company that goes through the batch relies on this software to get the most out of their YC experience. 

• Forums & Alumni Directory. Helps founders get the best advice and feedback on how to build their startup – from technical advice, customer acquisition, fundraising and more.

• Demo Day investor portal. Matching founders and investors for early seed fundraising, with billions of dollars resulting from the connections we’ve made through our platform. 

• Launch YC. A public platform for YC founders to get early customers and product feedback from both other YC alumni and the broader public. 

About the team

Our whole software team is only 15 full-stack product engineers, and we enjoy working in a small team with high impact and knowing each other by name. We have a broad range of experiences from bigger companies like Meta and Google, and many of us have started startups ourselves. True to YC advice, our product engineers talk to our customers regularly and ship fast. We also define our own roadmap and often design our own products when needed. 

Our stack is pretty straightforward (Rails, React, Postgres), and the last three engineers have learned it on the job. That said, we’ve found that enjoying front-end software development is key to being successful here, so it’s almost a requirement for the role. Our needs as an organization require a large degree of flexibility, and people change teams quite often. 

Lastly: If you’re interested in starting your own startup one day: eight former engineers on our team have gone on to start YC-funded startups.  If you want to start your own startup someday but aren’t ready to do it now, working at YC could be an excellent way to get there. 

Location: This is an in-person role at YC's campus in Dogpatch, San Francisco. This is where our users (founders, partners and employees) are five days a week, so it’s optimal for you to be here with them. You must live in the SF Bay Area or be willing to relocate.  We offer generous relocation support for those who want to move to SF to work here.

Compensation: $180,000 to $270,000 base (depending on skills and experience) plus bonus. 

Benefits : YC has a profit-sharing program, which is comparable to equity in an early-stage startup or carry in a VC fund.

Our full benefits package includes medical, vision, and dental plans, infertility benefit, STD/LTD, life insurance, commuter benefits, flexible spending account, health savings account, 401(k) + 4% matching, generous parental leave, paid holidays and flexible paid time off policy.

Work Authorization: This position does not support work authorization/visa sponsorship. 

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 foundhere.

The YC internal software is mostly written in Ruby on Rails and React. It runs on AWS and PostgreSQL. Previous experience developing web apps will be helpful, but we don't care if you've used React or Rails specifically.

Note: Hacker News is written in Lisp, but Hacker News is run by a separate team.