---
title: 'Software Engineer at ara.so'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-ara-so-san-francisco-80njxcp5eyt3'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-10'
---

# Software Engineer at ara.so

- **Company:** ara.so
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Compensation:** $105k–$225k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-04-20
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-10
- **Apply:** https://jobs.gem.com/ara-so/am9icG9zdDpXGHEmOSoWjJlJqsmg8Gfd

## Job description

## About Ara

Ara (YC P26) is building the fastest personal AI agent computing environment, designed to run autonomous agents 24/7. We provide instant, secure cloud runtimes where agents execute inside isolated environments with persistent state and real-world permissions. Agents can operate across file systems, inboxes, APIs, and workflows programmatically. We are building the infrastructure layer that makes AI agents native to personal computing.

## The Role

We are hiring a Software Engineer to help architect and scale the core runtime systems powering autonomous agents. You will work on backend orchestration, secure sandboxed execution environments, stateful runtime infrastructure, API layers, and distributed systems designed for high concurrency and reliability. This is an on-site role in San Francisco focused on foundational systems, not surface-level features.

## What You Will Do

- Design and implement low-latency backend services
- Build and maintain secure execution environments
- Develop scalable distributed systems
- Integrate third-party APIs and external services
- Contribute to architectural decisions across the stack

## What We Are Looking For

- Strong computer science fundamentals in systems, networking, and concurrency
- Experience building and operating production backend systems
- Proficiency in modern backend technologies and API design
- Comfort with cloud infrastructure and distributed architectures
- High ownership mindset and ability to ship quickly Nice to have: experience with sandboxing, virtualization, agent frameworks, LLM-integrated systems, or infrastructure automation.

If you want to burn millions of tokens building real infrastructure instead of demos, join us.

## About ara.so

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Ara is a cloud coding agent that autonomously plans, executes, and verifies software engineering tasks — turning issues, alerts, or prompts into reviewed, evidence-backed pull requests.
- **Entity Type**: Private (YC-backed, Spring 2026 batch)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, USA
- **Founded**: 2026
- **Founders**: Adi Singh (CEO) and Sven Myhre (CTO)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: AI-powered developer tools / autonomous software engineering
- **Target customers**: Software engineering teams (B2B, from startups to enterprise) who want to automate the full development lifecycle — from bug reproduction to code review and merge.
- **Mission / Purpose**: “Coding is changing from a craft practiced one prompt at a time into an operating system for building.” [ara.so/about](https://ara.so/about)

## Products & Services
- **[Ara Cloud Agent](https://ara.so)**: A cloud-based autonomous software engineer that connects to GitHub repositories. It watches work in progress, plans the next step, and executes tasks using its own isolated ephemeral workspace (Mac, Linux, or Windows). Each run produces a verified pull request with screen recordings, logs, and evidence. Features include durable memory, multi-model routing, Slack integration, security scanning, and a web/mobile interface.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation / Market Cap**: Not disclosed
- **Key Metric**: Total funding — Y Combinator’s standard Spring 2026 batch investment (amount not specified); bootstrapped revenue from $20/month individual plan with usage-based top-ups.
- **Notable Investors / Partners**: Y Combinator (primary partner: Aaron Epstein) [ycombinator.com/companies/ara](https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/ara)
- **Growth Signals**: Active YC batch company (Spring 2026), currently hiring a Founding Engineer. The product is live and publicly accessible; the team is small (2 founders) but shipping a full platform with enterprise features (self-hosted, audit logs, role-based controls).

## Competitive Advantages
- **Verification-first approach**: Every change ships with evidence — screen recordings, logs, and test results — not just a code diff.
- **Durable memory**: The agent learns from each run and writes back knowledge to the repo, so the next run starts smarter.
- **Full lifecycle automation**: Ara doesn’t just write code; it reproduces bugs, writes fixes, runs tests, scans for security issues, and opens a review-ready PR — all in one closed loop.
- **Multi-model & tool-agnostic**: Works as a REST API, MCP server, or Slack bot; can be invoked from Claude, ChatGPT, Codex, or any other tool.

## Strategic Focus
- **Current priorities**: Building reliable agent-assisted engineering at scale — moving from single-run demos to production-grade autonomous workflows. Expanding enterprise controls (self-hosted deployment, compliance records) and deepening integrations with existing developer tools.
- **Direction for growth**: Turn every repository into a semi-autonomous system where human direction is amplified by verified agent execution.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: Small team, high ownership, bias toward shipping real production systems. The founders describe it as “the software factory we wanted as engineers.” [ara.so/careers](https://ara.so/careers)
- **Work environment**: Remote-friendly (headquarters in San Francisco). The team has “built and lived together across four cities” [ycombinator.com](https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/ara). Founding engineer role offers high autonomy across product, runtime, and production systems.
- **Engineering culture**: Emphasis on “dependable products, not demos.” Clear communication and comfort with hard trade-offs are valued. The stack is modern and agent-oriented (cloud infrastructure, LLM orchestration, fast iteration).
- **Perks**: Not explicitly listed, but typical early-stage YC startup benefits (equity, flexible schedule, direct impact on product direction).

## Sources
1. [ara.so](https://ara.so)
2. [ara.so/about](https://ara.so/about)
3. [ara.so/careers](https://ara-90a60a07.mintlify.app/careers)
4. [ycombinator.com/companies/ara](https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/ara)

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