0-to-1 · Full-stack · AI native

Founding Software Engineer 0 → 1

We are looking for a high-leverage, pragmatic, and polyglot engineer to serve as an architectural anchor for Ocean’s core platform. You won’t just write code—you will own product trajectories zero-to-one, architect resilient software primitives, and define our engineering culture.

Apply for the founding role See what we value
Location
Hybrid / Remote
India
Role
Full-time
Founding tier
Base salary
₹12,00,000 per annum
₹12 LPA fixed
Equity
1.5%–3.0% ESOPs
4 years · 1-year cliff
Milestone upside: automatic salary increment upon completing our next funding milestone.
What we look for

Strong fundamentals. Sharp product judgment. AI-native execution.

We value range, curiosity, and ownership more than a perfectly linear résumé.

01

Software fundamentals & OOP

Deep understanding of core programming principles, object-oriented design, state management, algorithmic thinking, and clean API design.

02

0-to-1 product ownership

A track record of building production applications from a greenfield idea through deployment, feedback, and iteration.

03

ML / DL / LLM-native systems

Practical experience with retrieval pipelines, context optimization, agents, local inference, machine learning, or deep learning.

04

Early-stage startup mindset

Comfort with technical ambiguity, rapid execution, and the judgment to balance durable architecture with shipping speed.

05

Frontend & JavaScript mastery

Strong operational capability across modern JS/TS frameworks such as React, Next.js, and Node.js to craft fluid UI/UX.

06

Rust readiness & systems curiosity

Eagerness to learn and build in Rust for performance-critical native features, low-latency backends, and IPC runtimes.

07

6+ months of AI-assisted engineering

Daily, continuous use of tools like Claude, OpenAI Codex, Cursor, or Copilot as a force multiplier in your engineering workflow.

Primary technical stack

Build from the interface to the inference runtime.

You do not need to arrive as an expert in every tool. You do need the curiosity to move fluently across layers.

Frontend & web

TypeScriptJavaScriptReactNext.jsNode.js

Systems & backend

RustPythonIPCNative

AI orchestration

vLLMPyTorchVector storesRAG

Dev environment

DockerGitClaudeCursorCodex
How we evaluate

Real-world execution, not LeetCode grinding.

Practical by design

The Sandbox Challenge

We evaluate execution velocity, product judgment, communication, and systems thinking through a focused 48-hour assessment using Ocean itself.

ocean://sandbox-challenge 48 hours
  1. Build a useful project using Ocean, our AI-native terminal application.
  2. Record a concise walkthrough of your workflow and product decisions.
  3. Share architectural and UX feedback grounded in your hands-on experience.
  4. Propose features that could increase developer velocity by 40%.
How to apply

Help build the platform you wish agents already had.

If you care about high-impact software, meaningful ownership, and equity upside, send us three things:

  • Your GitHub profile or portfolio
  • A project or app you built from scratch
  • A short note on a complex system or workflow you automated recently
Apply now

Applications are reviewed through Google Forms · Hybrid / Remote in India