---
title: 'Product Engineer, Applied AI at Paradigm'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/product-engineer-applied-ai-paradigm-san-francisco-n9jh4z4a5wxq'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-10-20'
---

# Product Engineer, Applied AI at Paradigm

- **Company:** Paradigm
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Compensation:** $250k–$400k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-08-03
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-20
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/paradigm/b85b9094-2467-4f49-9a36-ca93da34a3f5

## Job description

## PRODUCT ENGINEER, APPLIED AI

The Firm [Paradigm](https://www.paradigm.xyz/) is a San Francisco-based investment firm focused on frontier technologies across the globe, with over $11 billion in assets under management. We make investments in companies and protocols at all stages, ranging from early-stage venture financing rounds to growth equity to liquid assets.

Paradigm was co-founded in 2018 and is co-led by [Matt Huang](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kmhuang/) and [Alana Palmedo](https://www.linkedin.com/in/askorniakoffpalmedo/). We’ve been hard at work investigating the world’s most beautiful technical problems since day one. Our research-driven approach helps us build relationships with founders and entrepreneurs, but it also reflects our broader goal of accelerating the progress of frontier technology.

## The Role

Over the last eight years Paradigm has built some of the most used open-source software in the crypto industry, including [Reth](https://github.com/paradigmxyz/reth) and [Foundry](https://github.com/foundry-rs/foundry). Earlier this year we published [EVMBench](https://paradigm.xyz/evmbench) with OpenAI, launched [Optimization Arena](https://www.optimizationarena.com/) and hosted the [Auto Research](https://paradigm.xyz/automated-research-hackathon/) hackathon.

More recently, we open-sourced [Centaur](https://www.paradigm.xyz/writing/open-sourcing-centaur-multiplayer-self-hosted-secure-agents), a self-hosted runtime for multiplayer AI agents, which we’ve been using to transform how we work at Paradigm and Tempo.

All of these were done part-time by people on Paradigm’s Investing & Research team. This has made us realize that we are people-bound, not idea or impact bound. We need to grow our team to achieve our ambitions.

We want to do three things:

- Experiment aggressively. We will push the capabilities of models, harnesses and infrastructure to the limit in service of Paradigm’s broader goals in investing, research, and building.
- Build in public. We will get our hands dirty building useful open-source products.
- Invest. We will leverage our infrastructure - an area we think is still ripe for disruption with AI - to be better investors. By understanding infrastructure gaps experientially, we may incubate companies that will accrue value by addressing these gaps.

As we deploy more long-running agentic capabilities, we may get into fundamental research, forecasting, model cost optimizations etc., but that is not our focus yet.

We are looking for fearless engineers for this project who understand infrastructure, security, AI models, harnesses, and Slackbots. You will work directly with Georgios, Arjun, Matt Slipper, and the broader Paradigm team, alongside Tempo, and other companies that are themselves operating at the frontier.

Your work will directly impact how Paradigm operates every day. If this sounds like you, reach out.

## Responsibilities

- Build for the people moving the firm: Embed with I&R, Events, and BizOps to find the work and decisions worth automating and ship agents to take it on. The features you build become how the firm sources, researches, and operates, which means your product sense directly shapes how effective Paradigm is.
- Agent surfaces: Build the user-facing experience, primarily the Slack interface, so collaborating with agents feels fast, legible, and trustworthy.
- Extensibility and developer experience: Own the systems teams use to extend Centaur without forking it including tools, workflows, skills, and overlays, and make building on top of it feel effortless.
- Harness integration: Expand support across the different agent CLIs Centaur can run, keeping one clean execution model underneath.
- Open-source stewardship: As an MIT-licensed project, you're the face of it to the community, triaging issues and PRs, writing the docs and examples, and shaping the guides that pull people in.

## Qualifications and Experience

- A track record of building world-class products
- Experience applying modern AI and software systems to solve complex, ambiguous problems end-to-end
- Comfortable navigating everything from foundational models to full-stack product delivery
- Pragmatic, product-minded builder who cares about solving real problems rather than overfitting to academic ML goals
- Ability to work autonomously and as a collaborator on the team

Attributes

- Exceptional team player
- Extreme open-mindedness
- Clarity of thought
- Clear and concise communication (both written and verbal)
- Technical depth; analytical; rigorous
- Highly curious; fast learner
- Ability to bridge technical and investing mindsets
- Interest in frontier technologies and crypto markets

## About Paradigm

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Paradigm is a technology investment firm that invests in and builds across frontier technologies including crypto, AI, and robotics.
- **Entity Type**: Private (venture capital firm)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, CA, USA (with offices in New York City and Washington, DC)
- **Founded**: 2018
- **Founders**: Matt Huang (Co-Founder & Managing Partner)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry/industries**: Venture Capital, Technology Investment, Blockchain/Crypto Infrastructure
- **Target customers**: Founders and companies building at the technological frontier (crypto, AI, robotics); B2B for its portfolio companies
- **Mission or purpose statement**: "We live on the frontier and believe in progress through technology."

## Products & Services
For each major offering:
- **[Investment & Incubation]**: Paradigm invests in founders at every stage (from first check through to public markets) across crypto, AI, robotics, and other frontiers. They also incubate new companies, such as Tempo (a payments network created with Stripe).
- **[Open Source Software]**: Paradigm builds and contributes to a substantial portfolio of open source projects, including Foundry (Ethereum dev toolkit, 10.5k GitHub stars), Reth (Ethereum protocol implementation, 5.7k stars), Alloy, Viem, Wagmi, Cryo, and many others.
- **[Research & Fellowship]**: Runs an annual Paradigm Fellowship and produces research papers, security evaluations (e.g., with OpenAI on EVMbench), and industry analysis.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not disclosed (private investment firm). In 2021, Paradigm raised a $2.5 billion fund (its third), making it one of the largest crypto-focused venture funds at the time.
- **Key Metric**: Over 130+ investments made since founding in 2018; manages billions in assets under management.
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Stripe (co-incubated Tempo), OpenAI (collaborated on EVMbench), and a vast portfolio of crypto and frontier tech companies.
- **Growth Signals**: Continued expansion into AI and robotics investments beyond crypto; incubation of Tempo with Stripe signals a push into payments infrastructure; active hiring across engineering, research, and operations roles.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Depth of technical expertise**: Paradigm's team includes world-class researchers, engineers, and operators who actively ship open-source code (Foundry, Reth, Alloy) and publish research. They are "as likely to collaborate on a research paper or ship code" as to partner on strategy.
- **Full-stack capability**: They invest, incubate, build open source software, provide policy/government affairs support, and offer operational assistance—giving them a uniquely hands-on approach for a venture firm.
- **Network effect**: Their portfolio of 130+ companies and deep relationships with Stripe, OpenAI, and other major tech players creates a powerful ecosystem for founders and employees.
- **Culture of building**: Many team members have built tools, protocols, and companies that are "some of the most used on the internet" (e.g., Ethereum, crypto infrastructure).

## Strategic Focus
- **Current priorities**: Expanding investment beyond crypto into AI and robotics; incubating new companies (like Tempo); building open-source infrastructure for the next generation of decentralized and AI-powered applications; advancing policy and regulatory frameworks for frontier tech (active in Washington, DC).
- **Growth direction**: Moving toward multi-frontier investing (crypto, AI, robotics) while deepening its technical capabilities through open source contributions and research.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: Described as builder-first and deeply technical. The team values "depth as a prerequisite for invention" and being "close to the metal." They emphasize collaboration on research, code, and strategy.
- **Remote/hybrid/office policy**: Has offices in San Francisco, NYC, and Washington, DC. The website lists opportunities across the US, suggesting a hybrid or office-first approach, though specific remote policy details are not publicly clear.
- **Notable perks/engineering culture**: 
  - Contributes to and maintains widely-used open source projects (Foundry, Reth, Viem, etc.)
  - Provides a fellowship program for emerging talent
  - Offers opportunities to work alongside top-tier researchers, engineers, and operators in a venture context
  - All roles (engineering, research, operations, legal, marketing, etc.) contribute to advancing frontier technology

## Sources
1. [paradigm.xyz - About](https://www.paradigm.xyz/about)
2. [paradigm.xyz - Team](https://www.paradigm.xyz/team)
3. [paradigm.xyz - Build (Open Source)](https://www.paradigm.xyz/build)
4. [paradigm.xyz - Careers](https://www.paradigm.xyz/careers)
5. [jobs.paradigm.xyz - Portfolio Jobs](https://jobs.paradigm.xyz/companies)

## Other roles at Paradigm

- [Receptionist](https://feeny.ai/job/receptionist-paradigm-san-francisco-2rs6xwpcqdw3) — San Francisco, CA
- [Executive Assistant](https://feeny.ai/job/executive-assistant-paradigm-san-francisco-h7j4agf62bhm) — San Francisco, CA
- [Events](https://feeny.ai/job/events-paradigm-san-francisco-wakp0cy0nsp2) — San Francisco, CA
- [Infrastructure Engineer, Applied AI](https://feeny.ai/job/infrastructure-engineer-applied-ai-paradigm-san-francisco-9fz29515dd8b) — San Francisco, CA
- [Engineering - Paradigm Portfolio](https://feeny.ai/job/engineering-paradigm-portfolio-paradigm-remote-ay1b4kb973wq)
- [Growth - Paradigm Portfolio](https://feeny.ai/job/growth-paradigm-portfolio-paradigm-remote-4v15ye1ngc09)
- [Controller](https://feeny.ai/job/controller-paradigm-san-francisco-94jrra8m1sxn) — San Francisco, CA