Planning to start a company someday? We’re hiring.
We’ve opened an engineering role at Savvy for people who think they might want to start a company someday called ‘Engineering - Future Founder’. It’s open across experience levels, but we’re particularly interested in engineers early in their careers. We ran a similar style search back when I was an early employee at Carta -- it found us some great business, engineering, and product leads that wouldn't have otherwise looked at us.
What you’d work on
Savvy builds AI-enabled software for financial advisors. There’s a lot to fix in how this industry works: disconnected systems, repetitive paperwork, processes that require double or triple data entry in systems designed before you were born. Our engineers work on those problems with the people who deal with them every day (internal & external customers).
This role is designed to be a "multi-player" role in that you will need to leverage your engineering background, AI, but also lean into learning how to be a product manager, a designer, a tester, a product marketer, and think through how your product might inflect variables within Savvy's P&L. AKA: all the things you'd need to worry about as an early founder.
We want you involved in all of that. Get to know the people using your software well enough to have your own ideas about what would help them (many of them are a Slack DM away).
You’ll have experienced engineers, product managers, marketers, designers, and sales to work with, but you won’t need to wait until you’re senior to contribute to our success.
How we work
We use AI heavily in engineering (actually, all of Savvy). We expect you to use it too, and to experiment with how it changes your work. I’d be interested to hear what you’ve already built with it, including where it let you down or surprised you on how far you could get, how quickly.
There’s room here to try things without getting permission for every step. That comes with an expectation that you’ll follow through every stage of the product lifecycle, from the first prompt you send Astra to collecting data from Salesforce to see if your development is showing up in prospect demos.
You’ll also work around people who have built companies before. Our CEO, Ritik Malhotra, is a serial founder, and we have experienced leaders across EPD and the business. Part of the opportunity is being close enough to ask why we made a particular decision (until you can make such decisions yourself), and to see how it works out.
Note that Savvy is a strong in-person culture. This role does not work remotely. We are located in Union Square in Manhattan. We are in-person Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday, where Wednesdays are typically a more heads-down day.
Who should apply
You need to be able to build software. Beyond that, we’re interested in what you’ve done with that ability, whether it was at a job or on your own.
A small project that somebody uses is a good place to start a conversation. What made you build it? How did you find the first users? What did you change after hearing from them? Those details tell us a lot, especially when you don’t have a long résumé yet.
You don’t need a startup idea that worked out. Being curious about running a business, and willing to take on more responsibility as you learn, is enough reason to consider the role.
We have plenty of work to do at Savvy. We’d like to do some of it with people who will go on to build companies of their own.
This is not a 40-hour a week job. For us to give you as much scope, the resources, the mentorship, the training, the access to see what good (and bad) looks like requires significant investment on your side. Much of Savvy's leadership is working harder (and more hours) than ever before, even with AI.
Unfortunately we are unable to sponsor new visas for this role at this time. H-1b transfers likely work, as would TN visas, but others are tricky to navigate with this style of role.
What does success look like?
Sometime down the road, probably about 18 months of hands-on effort you'll start to get an itch to actually go through with starting something on your own.
You'll start to build some prototypes, do market and user research, and maybe test out a few ideas on your fellow teammates to see if your idea has legs.
You'll reference the public launches of the things you built at Savvy as a proof point for prospective investors (if you don't bootstrap it, that is). "I built [X] at Savvy after discovering problem [Y], leading to $[Z] millions in new revenue" is an amazing tagline I hope you can earn here.
Then, on some busy Friday afternoon, you'll drop the ominous DM to me: "Hey Eric, can we catch up for a few?" You'll tell me that you got a pre-seed check from one of Savvy's own angel investors and that your last day is two Tuesdays from now (to catch your next vest date). I'll be sad to lose you, but excited to see you jump out of the nest. Just make sure to let me into your friends & family round.
Applying
We use Ashby to track candidates. Drop your application (CV, Linkedin, etc) here.
