Founding Engineer

At Pickle, we’re building the “online-me” infrastructure—personalized, conversational AI Self avatars that let anyone be present everywhere, all the time. Our mission is to create tools that re-imagine how people tell their own stories and remove the barriers to making an impact with their personal brands.

We’re backed by Y Combinator, BASS Ventures, NFX, Rebel Fund, Pioneer Fund, Krew Capital, and more, we ship products people use every single day and push the frontiers of AI research to make self-expression effortless.

We’re looking for Founding Engineer who can own features end-to-end, move at startup speed, and treat every line of code like a product launch. Your code will matter from day one, its impact compounding over time. This will be the most meaningful work of your career.

what you’ll do

• own the macOS/iOS client end-to-end in Swift/SwiftUI—design, build, and ship improvements every week.
• pipe ultra-low-latency media streams from our cloud NeRF/diffusion models through WebRTC + LiveKit into virtual-camera / mic drivers—keeping every frame buttery-smooth.
• talk to users and read usage data daily to eliminate friction between them and Pickle’s core value—pushing the product to a new local maximum every single day.
• harden the experience: auto-reconnect logic, silent updates, crash telemetry, and an onboarding flow that gets new users avatar-ready in under two minutes.
• everything that can make greatness happen with product and code

qualities we’re looking for

our founding team will define the culture of our company, so we have an extremely high bar for bringing people to the team.

Bonus: Experience working with AI/ML models or hands-on experience leveraging GPUs

we believe in the benefits of working in-person at the early stage of a startup; we’re looking to keep growing our team in San Francisco.

** you’ll work remotely until our SF office opens in September.

what we offer

salaries will be within standard market rates for each role, include medical insurance, perks like in-office meals, and 0.5%-3% equity.

interview process

1. video-call to chat about your background and interests/goals.
2. paid technical challenge – build a small feature that we will integrate within our tool.
3. work together remote for a week.
4. offer.