Y Combinator is run by a small team committed to helping founders build the next Airbnb, Stripe, Reddit, or Doordash. We work together on the same San Francisco campus where we run each YC batch, and we operate using the same principles we teach our startups. If you’ve read Paul Graham’s essays or watched YC’s videos, you already have a sense of what it’s like to work here: fast-moving, product-led, and focused on helping founders succeed. Working at YC puts you right in the center of the startup world.

About the role

YC relies heavily on software to run the batch and support thousands of alumni — and much of that software is deeply frontend-driven, used all day by founders, partners, and investors. The Bookface team builds YC’s most important user-facing tools, and nearly everything you work on will shape someone’s experience in the batch or alumni community. Current projects include:

• Bookface. The primary interface founders use throughout the batch — from event schedules to office hours to pitch prep. You’ll be shaping UX and UI that founders interact with every single day.

• Forums & Alumni Directory. Social and community products where great UX directly impacts how founders get advice, find expertise, and form relationships.

• Demo Day investor portal. A critical frontend experience used by thousands of investors. Your work helps founders meet the right investors and raise billions of dollars in seed funding.

• Launch YC. A public-facing product where design, frontend quality, and user interaction matter immensely for helping founders reach early customers.

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.

Location

This is an in-person role at YC’s Dogpatch campus in San Francisco. Our users — founders, partners, and staff — are here five days a week, and being onsite creates huge advantages for product development. You must live in the Bay Area or be willing to relocate. We offer generous relocation support.

Compensation

Base salary: $185K–$300K, depending on experience.

Benefits

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

Our full benefits package includes medical, vision, and dental, infertility benefits, STD/LTD, life insurance, commuter benefits, FSA/HSA, 401(k) with 4% matching, generous parental leave, paid holidays, and flexible PTO.

Work Authorization

YC is willing to sponsor certain employment visas in accordance with company policy.

Legal Note

Y Combinator considers qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable law, including San Francisco’s Fair Chance Ordinance. YC is committed to protecting applicant privacy and complies with the California Consumer Privacy Act. The Ashby, Inc. privacy policy (our hiring platform) governs related data collection.