---
title: 'Senior Software Engineer, Agentic Harness Quality and Performance at Goodnotes'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/senior-software-engineer-agentic-harness-quality-and-performance-goodnotes-rd5h679ajhf8'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-10-20'
---

# Senior Software Engineer, Agentic Harness Quality and Performance at Goodnotes

- **Company:** Goodnotes
- **Location:** London, United Kingdom
- **Posted:** 2026-10-06
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-20
- **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/goodnotes/jobs/6216615004

## Job description

Good Systems is the parent company behind Goodnotes, where millions of people capture and develop their ideas. Goodnotes is where we started, and it’s now the foundation for a growing family of products. By reimagining how we interact with information, we’re bringing together human creativity and the breakthrough capabilities of AI. We build products that help people turn good thinking into good work.

## Our Values

Dream big

- Be visionary, strategic, and open to innovation

Build great things

- Work in service of our users, always improving and pushing higher

Operate like an owner

- Take responsibility with bold decision-making and bias for action

Win like a sports team

- Be trusting and collaborative while empowering others

Learn and grow fast

- Never stop learning and iterate fast

Share our passion

- Share ideas and practice enthusiasm and joy

Be user obsessed

- Empathetic, inquisitive, practical

## About the role

You will join Paddington, our AI-native product line inside Goodnotes, and work directly with Steven, our founder, and a small team shipping new products. Engineers own the full cycle: they design, build, test, ship, and operate what they ship. Coding agents write the product code, and the engineer who merges it owns what lands.

You will ship product changes with a squad and build the harness around those agents: guides and automated checks that catch defects and performance regressions before the code merges. When a defect reaches users, or a user-facing path gets slower, you change the product code or the check and show the measurement. You'll be an individual contributor reporting to the Engineering Manager. We hire at Senior level and welcome Staff-level candidates.

- This role will be required to work on-site, 5 days per week in our London Paddington office
- This is a permanent role
- This role does not include visa sponsorship

This is the role for you if you're excited to work on:

- You start in a product squad on day one and ship code users can run. You keep 20 to 30 percents of your time in a squad after that, and the checks you write come from that release path.
- You design the guides and checks that steer the coding agent before it edits and correct the edit after. Fast, deterministic checks run in the agent session and at pre-commit. Slower checks run in CI. Every message tells the agent how to fix the finding. You track which checks fire and remove the ones that never do.
- You improve the software users run. You take a defect class or a performance regression that reached them, change the product code or add a check aimed at that class, and publish escaped defects per release with the performance numbers for that product.
- We build for iOS, Android, Mac, Windows, web, and backend. You have shipped on at least one of them. You package the guides and checks per platform so a new repo starts with them in place.
- You write each check so another engineer can add the next one. Squads choose what to adopt, so the check has to earn its place.

The skills you will need to be successful:

- 5 or more years as a software engineer shipping features, services, or app changes to users, in at least one of Swift, TypeScript, Rust, Go, or Java. You still write and merge code in that language.
- Static analysis you built for a team: custom lint rules, dependency rules, and messages that describe the fix. Pre-commit and CI you designed, with fast checks early and slow checks after integration.
- Daily use of a coding agent such as Claude Code, Cursor, or Codex to write product code, and a guide, lint rule, or eval you committed that runs on the agent's next edit.
- A performance change in product code you can walk through. Startup, latency, memory, battery, or throughput, with the before and after measurement from the product or its benchmark.
- A tool you built that other engineers adopted and extended on their own.
- Judgment about when a check is enough. A long rule list slows the engineers and the agents.
- You work with engineers, designers, and product. You set your own agenda, act before you are asked, and handle ambiguity and conflict.

Preferred:

- LLM-as-judge checks or eval suites for the product's output, or for an agent-written diff.
- Architecture fitness functions you wired into CI for performance, security, or observability.
- Shipped work on iOS or Android and on a server or web codebase.
- A full-cycle team where you operated what you built after it shipped.

The interview process:

- Talent Intro Call: A conversation with our Talent Acquisition team to dive into your experience, what motivates you, and why you're interested in joining Goodnotes.

- Technical Pre-screen: A short Software Engineering-focused online rapid-fire questions round.

- Role-Specific Assessment: A live session in our London Paddington office, focused on the core technical skills for this role. You use your own coding agent on a hands-on exercise, then talk through how you would design the harness. This is your chance to show us how you tackle real-world challenges.

- Hiring Manager Interview: A deeper dive into your professional background, your preferred ways of working, and the specific impact you'll have within the team.

- Values-Based Panel Interview: A conversation with 2-3 team members centred on our company values. We'll discuss past experiences to see how your approach aligns with our culture.

- AI Literacy: As an AI-first company, we'll meet with one of our AI champions to discuss your curiosity, understanding, and practical use of AI tools in your daily workflow.

What's in it for you:

- Customized Growth & Wellness Budgets: We provide dedicated stipends for the things that keep you at your best, including noise-cancelling headphones for deep focus, professional training, personal development, and health and wellness activities.

- Global Connectivity: While we embrace flexible work, we love seeing each other. We provide sponsored visits to our beautiful office locations to foster face-to-face collaboration.

- Company-Wide Offsites: Once a year, we gather the entire global team in person to celebrate our wins, align on our vision, and build lasting connections.

- Comprehensive Health Coverage: Your well-being is our priority. We offer premium medical insurance for you and a dependent to ensure peace of mind for you and your family.

- 24 remote working days per year: Giving you the freedom to work from a location that suits your life. Whether that's closer to family, while travelling, or simply a change of scenery to refresh your focus.

Goodnotes is committed to fostering a diverse, inclusive, and equitable workplace. We welcome applications from individuals of all backgrounds, identities, and experiences, making all employment decisions based strictly on merit, qualifications, and business needs.

Note: Employment is contingent upon successful completion of background checks, including verification of employment, education, and criminal records.

By submitting your application, you acknowledge that you have read and understood our Candidate Privacy Notice, which provides important information about the data we collect during the application process. You can find it [here](https://www.goodnotes.com/recruitment-privacy-policy).

## About Goodnotes

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Goodnotes develops an intelligent digital note-taking and document management platform that blends handwriting, typing, and AI to help users capture, organize, and act on ideas.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Bootstrapped, profitable from day one, no disclosed external venture funding)
- **Headquarters**: London, United Kingdom (with additional offices in Hong Kong and Singapore)
- **Founded**: 2010
- **Founders**: Steven Chan

## Core Business
- Primary industry/industries: Productivity Software, EdTech, Artificial Intelligence
- Target customers: B2C (millions of individual users, including students and professionals) and B2B (schools, universities, enterprises)
- Mission or purpose statement: "We're building the best medium for human and AI collaboration — so everyone can do their best thinking, create more freely, and unlock their full potential."

## Products & Services
- **Goodnotes App (Core Platform)**: A digital note-taking application for iPad, iPhone, and Mac (and web/Android via browser) that supports handwriting, typing, document annotation, and PDF management. The platform is known for its AI-powered handwriting recognition, spellcheck, and Word Complete features.
- **Goodnotes Marketplace**: A digital storefront launched in 2023 offering digital planners, stickers, stationery, and templates created by designers and the community.
- **AI Handwriting Replication & AI Spellcheck/Word Complete**: Proprietary AI features built in-house, including a machine learning model that replicates handwriting styles and provides intelligent text corrections.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not disclosed (privately held, bootstrapped, and profitable from inception)
- **Key Metric**: Over 24 million Monthly Active Users (MAU); over 1.8 billion notes created; rated 4.8/5 stars globally
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: No external venture investors (bootstrapped). Key partnerships include integration with Apple ecosystem (iPad, Apple Pencil) and educational institutions globally.
- **Growth Signals**: Scaled from a team of under 20 people (2019) to over 300 employees (2024); expanded to 190+ countries; launched Goodnotes Marketplace in 2023; actively investing in AI innovation and agent-driven engineering.

## Competitive Advantages
- **First-Mover Advantage & Brand Loyalty**: Launched in 2010 as one of the first high-quality handwriting apps for iPad, building a massive, loyal user base and a 4.8/5 star rating across millions of reviews.
- **Bootstrapped & Profitable**: Operates without VC pressure, allowing long-term product vision and sustainable growth without needing to chase short-term hypergrowth metrics.
- **Deep AI Integration**: Has invested heavily in proprietary AI (handwriting recognition, replication, spellcheck) that directly enhances core user experience—a moat that’s hard for generic note-taking apps to replicate.
- **Platform Stickiness**: The app is deeply integrated into users’ daily workflows for studying, notetaking, and document management, creating high switching costs.

## Strategic Focus
- **AI-First Product Development**: Embedding AI into every layer of the product, from agent-driven engineering to data-savvy product thinking and rapid-fire design. The company describes itself as building "the future of human-AI collaboration."
- **Scaling the Team & International Presence**: Growing headcount (300+ people), expanding offices in London, Hong Kong, and Singapore, and actively hiring across Product, Engineering, Marketing, and People teams.
- **Deepening B2B & Education Markets**: Working closely with schools and universities to tailor product improvements and expand institutional adoption.
- **Continuous Product Innovation**: Regularly releasing major updates (e.g., AI features, Marketplace) to evolve from a note-taking app into a broader productivity and thinking platform.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture & Values**: Strong emphasis on seven core values: Dream Big, Build Great Things, Operate Like an Owner, Win Like a Sports Team, Learn and Grow Fast, Share Our Passion, and Be User Obsessed. Values are actively used in performance reviews, peer recognition (Slack channels), and annual offsite awards.
- **Flexibility & Remote-First**: Over half the team is fully remote. Flexible working hours are standard, with a requirement that 4 hours per day overlap with London or Hong Kong business hours. Company is described as "remote-friendly" with a flexible work-from-home policy even for office-based staff.
- **Generous Compensation & Perks**: Competitive salary and equity, medical insurance from day one, monthly personal growth budget, sizable learning & development budget (for degrees, certificates, conferences), generous annual leave, compassionate leave, parental leave, sabbatical leave, and a monthly wellness budget.
- **Home Office Setup**: Provides a company-issued computer, tablet, stylus, and keyboard, plus a budget for home office furniture (desk, ergonomic chair, monitors, etc.).
- **Relocation Support**: Offers relocation support and visa sponsorship to London or Hong Kong, including a one-way flight ticket.
- **Annual Team Offsites**: The entire company gathers in person once a year (past locations include Hokkaido, Bali, Lisbon) for strategy workshops and team bonding.
- **AI & Innovation Culture**: Actively encourages employees to use AI in their work and in the hiring process. Hackathons are common, and employee passion projects (like the handwriting replication algorithm) often become product features.

## Sources
1. [goodnotes.com - About Us](https://goodnotes.com/about-us)
2. [goodnotes.com - Careers](https://www.goodnotes.com/careers)
3. [goodnotes.com - The Perks of Working at Goodnotes](https://www.goodnotes.com/blog/perks-of-working-at-goodnotes)
4. [goodnotes.com - Seven Company Values](https://www.goodnotes.com/blog/seven-goodnotes-company-values)
5. [job-boards.greenhouse.io - Goodnotes Jobs](https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/goodnotes)

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