Proliferate (YC S25) Is Hiring

Proliferate is an open-source, self-hostable AI IDE that enables teams to collaborate with software agents and aims to become the substrate companies use to deploy agents at scale. Seeded by True Ventures, Pear VC and 50+ YC founders and part of YC S25, the early-stage SoMa, San Francisco startup is led by Pablo Hansen, an AI engineer with rapid academic and startup experience who declined eight-figure acquisition offers to keep building. The company is focused on orchestration, agent-owned workflows and human-agent collaboration interfaces, and is explicitly oriented toward large, product-defining technical goals.

The founding product engineer role pays $150K-$300K with 0.30%-1.50% equity, is full-time, in-person, visa-sponsoring, and open to new grads. You will own major product areas end-to-end: design new interfaces leveraging model capabilities, convert repeat processes into autonomous agent workflows, and ship 0→1 features quickly. The team emphasizes fast shipping, deep work, deliberate internal use of agents, and ambitious AGI-aligned thinking, with perks like wearables, gym membership, free office meals, and protected mornings. Interview steps are a 15‑minute call, a 30‑minute technical session with a live codebase/agents, a paid 1-3 day trial ($1-3K), then references and an offer.