Ex-YC Founder at Sauna (San Francisco, CA)
Sauna· San Francisco, CA·
Role details
Job description
⚠️ Please read first
- This is a full-time, in-person role based in San Francisco (Presidio) - we work from the office 5 days a week.
- You must be based in the Bay Area or willing to relocate before starting.
- We require US work authorisation, but are open to O-1 or J-1 visa sponsorship for exceptional candidates.
About Sauna by Wordware
Every tool you use was built as an island, so you became the glue between them. You carry a name from Gmail into the CRM, a time from the CRM into Calendly, a note from Calendly into a doc. AI showed up and mostly became an eleventh window to paste into. Sauna is a hybrid of AI and software standing on one shared brain. It holds your context and hands you real software built on top of it. You talk to it like a chatbot and use what it builds like an app: software for the path you repeat, AI for the edge that never repeats. Keep it to yourself, or share the brain with your team. The clearest way to see it is a tool doing what its whole category cannot. An ordinary Calendly shows a stranger your free slots. Your Calendly writes the invite email itself, because it knows how the two of you know each other, and it offers a board member the slot over your gym block, because it knows which of your busy hours bend and for whom. Wordware is the team behind it, 15 people backed by Spark Capital, Felicis, and Y Combinator with a $30M seed, the largest in YC's history. We build from an office in the Presidio, fifty metres from Crissy Field beach, and we work absurdly hard because we can see and feel the outcome every day.
Being Real Something didn't work out. We get it. Some YC companies don't end the way the founders pictured, but the people who come out of that experience are some of the sharpest operators we know. We're looking for founders who still have the fire and want to plug into something that's past zero-to-one but still wide open. The Actual Opportunity We're 20 people defining a new category: our main product, Sauna, is the first multiplayer AI brain. You'd be one of the first people showing the world what Sauna can do on a team where your work moves the company. You Probably…
- Ran a YC company
- Know exactly what worked and what didn't
- Still want to build something massive rather than settle into a comfortable role
- Wear multiple hats
- Are genuinely excited about AI agents, not just resume-excited
What the Role Looks Like Shape is flexible. We've hired past founders into engineering, product, and growth roles. Tell us where you're strongest and we'll build the scope around you.
The Process: We keep our process simple. Exceptional candidates go from first touch to offer within 2 weeks.
- Application: Submit your resume and answer a few short questions.
- 15-minute intro call: Quick check to align on location, motivation, and logistics. If it's a go, we move fast from here.
- Deep dive call: A longer conversation about what you built, the decisions behind it, and where you'd plug in at Wordware.
Why work at Sauna
- Culture: Early-stage startup (18 people) with a "ship fast" ethos—one-week sprints, weekly demos, and features going from sketch to launch in days. The company uses its own product daily.
- Work Policy: Fully in-office, five days a week at the Presidio in San Francisco. Relocation required for non-local candidates.
- Compensation: Competitive base salary ($180K–$240K for Senior Full Stack Engineer), meaningful early-stage equity, health/dental, 401(k), considerable PTO, gym budget, and lunch provided.
- Engineering Culture: Work directly with the CTO; own infrastructure decisions that determine system reliability at scale; build real-time streaming, task queues, and multi-model LLM routing.
- Hiring Process: Simple and fast—exceptional candidates can go from first touch to offer within 2 weeks. Includes a paid in-person work trial (a few days to two weeks).