Paradigm — Software Engineer

Type: Full-time | On-site | San Francisco, CA Compensation: $225K–$275K + competitive equity Hiring count: 3 Visa sponsorship: Yes — open to visa transfers (OPT, H-1B transfers), including O-1. All visas sponsored and transferred; no restrictions, will go all the way for the right candidate. Reports to: June Lee, CTO

About Paradigm

Paradigm is a reimagined workspace with AI at its core — building accessible, large-scale agent orchestration. As agents become more powerful, accessible large-scale agent orchestration becomes the biggest opportunity, and that is what Paradigm is chasing.

Founded: 2024 | Team size: 10 | Total funding: $7M Industry: AI, B2B, Enterprise, Finance, Financial Services Website: Office: Chinatown/Nob Hill, San Francisco, CA Backing: Y Combinator, plus cofounders of Dropbox, Intercom, Langchain, Redis, Behance, Posthog, and more

Why Candidates Should Join

• Report directly to the CTO (ex-Google/Amazon): on a ~4-person engineering team, with outsized individual impact at a company scaling fast in AI.
• Era of the super engineer: one strong IC can have more influence here than a 20-person team at big tech.
• Early-stage equity upside: post-YC, backed by co-founders of Dropbox, Intercom, Langchain, and Redis.
• Hard problems, real ownership: own core distributed-systems infrastructure end to end, with your code directly shaping the product.

Intake Call Summary

• Hiring a senior engineering role focused on hands-on experience rather than leadership titles; separately opening this newer, less-senior Software Engineer role to capture strong mid-career candidates.
• Both roles target 3–5 years of experience. This Software Engineer role carries similar responsibilities to the senior role but is less intensive. Wants ICs, not aspiring managers.
• Company is well-regarded and attracts enthusiastic recruiters; values a diverse team with varied backgrounds.
• Values tenacity and a growth mindset — resilience and adaptability weigh heavily.
• Comp: senior role $300K–$350K; this mid-career role $225K–$275K. Open to visa sponsorship, including O-1 for exceptional candidates.
• Urgent need; quick turnaround wanted. Standard interview process with potential adjustments for mid-level candidates.
• Pain point: candidates with leadership titles but weak hands-on skills. Wants people who prefer IC work over a management path.
• Ideal profile: varied experience including startups and high-growth environments; non-traditional backgrounds that show determination and problem-solving.
• HM update (Aug 13, 2026): Increasing bandwidth for submissions; role updated to accommodate a more specific candidate profile.

The Role

We are looking for a Software Engineer with 3–5 years of experience to build the infrastructure powering large-scale agent orchestration. You are a hands-on IC who has moved between companies to find better challenges rather than climbing the ladder at one place. You thrive on hard distributed-systems problems and want your code to directly impact the product. Paradigm values tenacity, growth mindset, and raw engineering talent over pedigree.

What You'll Be Doing

• Building and scaling distributed services that orchestrate hundreds of thousands of AI agents processing millions of tokens per minute
• Solving unique parallelization challenges including race conditions, real-time transmission of agent outputs, and optimizing write throughput
• Designing and deploying production infrastructure as a primary individual contributor on medium-scale projects

Tech stack: Go, Redis, PubSub, RPC, Postgres, S3, Temporal

Qualifications

Seniority

• 3–5 years of experience in fullstack product engineering, with Go and/or React experience preferred [Required]

Work Experience

• Worked at a top-tier technology company; hands-on IC who shipped products in production (e.g., Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, OpenAI) [Must have]
• Career trajectory shows upward momentum: currently or recently at a stronger company than where they started; appears deliberate and in control of their career [Required]

Education

• CS degree or equivalent; non-target school backgrounds valued (scrappier — would rather take someone who went to a lower-ranked school and had a great career than someone who went to Stanford or MIT and had a good one) [Strongly preferred]

Hard Skills

• Deployed distributed services (Redis, PubSub, RPC, Postgres); developed frontend applications (React, Vite, Tanstack) [Required]
• Experience with Go in production environments [Strongly preferred]
• Competitive programming or ICPC background [Strongly preferred]

Soft Skills

• Hustler-type background: shows growth and ambition, like moving from a small town to a big tech company [Must have]
• Conveys complex technical concepts clearly to peers [Required]

Miscellaneous

• Must work in-person 5 days/week in SF [Must have]
• Visa sponsorship available including O-1 [Strongly preferred]

Traits to Avoid

• Returned to the same company after an internship for a full-time role (better to show progression)

Role Details

• Salary | $225,000–$275,000
• Equity | Competitive equity
• On-site policy | 5 days/week in-office in San Francisco
• Visa sponsorship | Open to visa transfers (OPT, H-1B), including O-1; no restrictions
• Employment type | Full-time
• Location | San Francisco, CA

Screening Questions

1. Are you able to work in San Francisco and come into the office 5 days per week?
2. Walk me through a time you left a company (or chose not to return) to pursue something more challenging. What drove that decision and what came out of it?
3. Can you be on-site? If not, are you willing to relocate?
4. What is your salary expectation?
5. How actively are you exploring new opportunities?

Interview Process

Stage 1 — Submit candidate After submitting, you'll be notified if the hiring manager wants to proceed.

Stage 2 — Initial Screen

Stage 3 — Algo

Stage 4 — System Design (60 minutes) System design interview focused on how the candidate would approach and continue building on a project. Evaluates ability to design and deploy distributed services, with emphasis on practical problem-solving rather than team leadership or allocation.

Stage 5 — Onsite In-person onsite interview conducted by the hiring manager. Less intensive than the senior-level onsite; focused on how the candidate would keep contributing to projects as an individual contributor rather than leading a team.

Stage 6 — Offer Extended

Stage 7 — Candidate Hired

Ideal Companies & Backgrounds

Updated Jun 4, 2026

AI/LLM startups and research labs building agent infrastructure OpenAI, Anthropic, Cohere, Anyscale, Modal Labs

Top tech companies known for strong IC engineering culture (candidates who left, not lifers) Databricks, Stripe, Cloudflare, Vercel, Figma, Ramp, Scale AI, Retool

Top-tier big tech companies with large-scale distributed systems (FAANG-level) Google, Amazon, Apple, NVIDIA, Meta

Ideal Candidate Profiles

For reference only — do not source these specific profiles.

Antoine Z. — LinkedIn Backend Software Engineer | Ex-Meta | Ex-Databricks | Google Kickstart (4th) | Facebook HackerCup (106th) | ACM-ICPC world finalist | Sandy, Utah

• Based in Sandy, Utah — aligns with the HM's strong preference for Utah engineering culture (unassuming, focused on the work, no signaling games)
• Ex-Meta and Databricks — strong name-brand experience
• ICPC World Finals ranked 72 of 30,134 — exceptional raw engineering talent signal

Nanway Chen — LinkedIn Software Engineer @ Meta | San Francisco

• Career progression is impressive: strip out time-in-seat and the resume reads like a strong senior candidate
• Fewer years of experience but high growth trajectory
• Shows the pattern of moving between companies to find better opportunities rather than staying put for promotions
• Fits perfectly into the 3–5 year experience range for this non-senior role

Rejected Candidate Feedback

• Ensure candidates show clear hands-on production distributed systems experience using the core tech stack (Go, Redis, PubSub, RPC, Postgres) rather than solely business-impact projects.
• Prioritize candidates with a rapid, upward career progression at top-tier companies; avoid those who are overly senior or carry excessive managerial duties.
• Focus on submissions with demonstrated 01 startup agility — proof they can build and ship end-to-end complex infrastructure in a fast-paced environment.
• Confirm candidates' ability to work in-person 5 days/week in SF, clearly evidenced on their profile.

Aggregate rejection reasons logged on the role (for pattern awareness):

• Career trajectory shows limited growth or decline
• Experience does not match the role's required focus
• Candidate's background includes unwanted technology areas
• Candidate lacks top-tier big-tech experience