--- title: 'Senior Platform Engineer at Sauna' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/senior-platform-engineer-sauna-san-francisco-pqfk6v0xnzv0' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-10-14' --- # Senior Platform Engineer at Sauna - **Company:** Sauna - **Location:** San Francisco, CA - **Employment:** full-time - **Work type:** onsite - **Posted:** 2026-10-07 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-14 - **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/sauna.ai/3584283c-a35a-435a-b606-9682fd30fce9 ## 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: 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, so an ordinary Calendly becomes one that writes the invite itself and knows which of your busy hours bend, and for whom. Software for the path you repeat, AI for the edge that never repeats. 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. ## About the Role Sauna's agent runtime has to keep track of work when a tool fails or new code ships mid-task. One session might start with a message, check Calendar, draft a Slack reply, and update Linear after the first response. A tool call can time out after the action succeeds; the runtime needs to know what happened before retrying. You'll build the execution engine behind those sessions, choosing when work belongs in an actor and when a job is enough. You'll also design how long-running processes deploy while other tasks are in flight. This is a senior, hands-on engineering role. You'll make those calls with the team, write the code, and own it in production. We'll teach you our agent harness. ## What You'll Do - Build and improve the runtime that starts agent work, carries session state through tool calls, and resumes interrupted runs. - Choose between actors and jobs for different kinds of work. Implement the choice and check how it behaves when sessions overlap. - Design how long-running processes drain or resume when code changes, keeping in-flight work accounted for across releases. - Handle retries and timeouts around tool calls, including cases where an external action succeeded but the response never came back. - Make runtime failures traceable. Find why a run stopped or stalled, fix the execution path, and see the change through to production. Stack: TypeScript, Cloudflare Workers, Durable Objects, Postgres, Docker. Experience with comparable runtimes counts. ## Who You Are ## Minimum - You've built and operated stateful backend systems in production, including work that outlasts the request that started it. - You can explain a decision you made between an actor, a background job, or a simpler service, and show what you shipped. - You've debugged concurrency, retries, or recovery in code you've owned. - You're productive in TypeScript and want to keep writing code as your scope grows. Bonus - You've worked on an agent runtime or agent harness. - You've worked with Cloudflare Workers, Durable Objects, or another actor-based runtime. - You've deployed long-running processes that persist or resume work across a code release. ## Compensation & Benefits Base salary: $180K-$240K + meaningful early-stage equity + health, dental, 401(k), considerable PTO, gym budget, lunch. 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. - 45-minute technical interview: You'll work through a real backend problem. We're looking for fluency, depth, and how you think about systems. - System design interview: We'll walk through a real Wordware architecture problem together. - Final conversation: We answer your questions and scope out the work trial. - Work trial: Paid trial to work on a real project in person with us, usually a few days to two weeks. See how we work and whether this feels like the right fit on both sides. ## About Sauna ## Company Overview - **One-liner**: Sauna is building a multiplayer AI agent that learns how you and your team work, remembers everything that matters, and acts on your behalf across thousands of connected tools. - **Entity Type**: Private (Seed stage) - **Headquarters**: San Francisco, CA, USA - **Founded**: Not publicly available - **Founders**: Not publicly available (company is described as being built by "ex-YC founders") ## Core Business - Primary industry/industries: Artificial Intelligence, Enterprise Software, Productivity - Target customers: B2B, teams and knowledge workers - Mission or purpose statement: To create an AI agent that works as a teammate—running in the background, learning context across sessions, and getting work done even when users are offline. ## Products & Services - **[Sauna AI Agent]**: A cloud-based AI agent that connects to over 3,000 tools and apps (Linear, GitHub, Notion, Gmail, Google Calendar, Jira, HubSpot, Stripe, etc.). It drafts messages, tracks what matters, files tickets, and delivers briefings. It is "multiplayer"—teammates share a Sauna's context and memory, and individual agents can communicate with each other. Available on web app, iOS, iMessage, Slack, and email. ## Market Standing - **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not disclosed - **Key Metric**: Total funding of $30M (largest seed round in YC history) - **Notable Investors/Partners**: Y Combinator, Spark Capital - **Growth Signals**: Named "Makers of the #1 Product of All Time on Product Hunt"; launched publicly on April 29, 2025; currently 18 employees; shipping to first paying users; described as building "Cursor for knowledge work" ## Competitive Advantages - **Multiplayer AI**: Unlike single-user AI assistants, Sauna allows entire teams to share context and memory, and individual agents can communicate peer-to-peer. - **Always-on Cloud Agent**: Runs 24/7 in the cloud, working even when the user is offline—drafting, tracking, filing, and briefing autonomously. - **Massive Tool Integration**: Connects to over 3,000 tools and apps, with custom MCP connector support. - **Record Seed Round**: The largest seed round in YC history signals strong investor confidence and ample runway. ## Strategic Focus - Current priorities include scaling the agent runtime to handle 1000x current load, building out sandbox infrastructure for secure code execution, and expanding the product to serve more team workflows. The company is hiring heavily across engineering, product, and growth roles to accelerate product-market fit. ## Why Work Here - **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). ## Sources 1. [sauna.ai](https://www.sauna.ai/) 2. [builtin.com - Sauna Jobs](https://builtin.com/company/sauna/jobs) 3. [ainative.careers - Product Manager at Sauna](https://ainative.careers/jobs/sauna-product-manager) 4. [jobs.ashbyhq.com - Growth @ Sauna](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/sauna.ai/56f92234-3ad1-4eaf-8f95-c53fa15af0a0) 5. [builtin.com - Senior Full Stack Engineer (Back-End)](https://builtin.com/job/senior-full-stack-engineer-back-end/9906576) ## Other roles at Sauna - [Senior Product Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-product-engineer-sauna-san-francisco-sm14qzn10738) — San Francisco, CA - [Growth Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/growth-engineer-sauna-san-francisco-6e341tpngphz) — San Francisco, CA - [Content Producer](https://feeny.ai/job/content-producer-sauna-san-francisco-q77m1ttavcj4) — San Francisco, CA - [Founding Growth Marketer](https://feeny.ai/job/founding-growth-marketer-sauna-san-francisco-hqrgcx3bvh48) — San Francisco, CA - [Senior Applied AI Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-applied-ai-engineer-sauna-san-francisco-k7rxpcqws9x4) — San Francisco, CA - [Head of Growth](https://feeny.ai/job/head-of-growth-sauna-san-francisco-ga9n0570xa0a) — San Francisco, CA - [Staff Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/staff-engineer-sauna-san-francisco-21rbhewz8nss) — San Francisco, CA - [Senior Full Stack Engineer (Back-End)](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-full-stack-engineer-back-end-sauna-san-francisco-xm6ndd6hmd8v) — San Francisco, CA - [Past Founder with Track Record and Experience](https://feeny.ai/job/past-founder-with-track-record-and-experience-sauna-san-francisco-w3rt1pkfe0hs) — San Francisco, CA - [Ex-YC Founder](https://feeny.ai/job/ex-yc-founder-sauna-san-francisco-8t25h4v5snmj) — San Francisco, CA