Principal Software Engineer
About The Position
Gitwit is an AI-first venture studio focused on identifying and building new ventures. They systematically explore, validate, and build AI-native products. This role is for an experienced engineer who wants to be involved in shaping products from inception, influencing technical direction, and having ownership in the venture creation process. Unlike traditional roles, this position offers the opportunity to work on multiple ventures, gain diverse experience, and have meaningful equity participation across the studio's portfolio. The ideal candidate thrives in ambiguity, possesses strong technical judgment, and is passionate about building impactful products from the ground up.
Requirements
- Personally done meaningful zero-to-one work, shaping product, technical, and execution decisions.
- Evidence of building something from scratch far enough to make meaningful product, technical, and speed-versus-quality tradeoffs.
- Think like a product builder, caring about what should be built, user needs, simplification, and what is not worth building.
- Move well in ambiguity, creating clarity while building without needing every variable resolved.
- Strong technical judgment to make sound architectural and tooling decisions for the stage.
- Experience designing and shipping full-stack applications using modern frameworks (e.g., TypeScript, React, Node.js).
- Experience building AI-native product experiences, including working with foundation model APIs and concepts like prompt engineering, RAG, agent workflows.
- Voracious learners with sharp judgment about emerging technology, especially AI capabilities.
- Have taste and care about whether something is sharp, usable, coherent, and worth a user’s time.
- Ability to work as part of a real venture team, communicating clearly and collaborating well.
- Desire for the real version of ownership, with authorship over what gets built and how it earns traction.
- Ability to overlap with core Central Time working hours.
- Ability to participate actively in team collaboration.
- Ability to travel occasionally for key planning sessions, venture work, or team gatherings.
Nice To Haves
- Experience with PostgreSQL and cloud-native infrastructure.
- Experience with OpenAI, Anthropic, and other foundation model APIs.
- Experience with AI orchestration, retrieval systems, and workflow automation.
Responsibilities
- Shape products from the beginning, defining what should be built, what should wait, and what should be cut.
- Build from zero and ship fast, taking ideas from concept to prototype to product in users’ hands.
- See work in the wild immediately, as built products ship and are used quickly.
- Make foundational technical decisions, choosing appropriate tools and architecture.
- Learn directly from users, pressure-test assumptions, and adjust quickly based on feedback.
- Think across the full product reality, considering usefulness, usability, differentiation, and economic soundness.
- Operate at a pace that keeps things fun, with small teams and minimal process.
- Help shape ventures, contributing to decisions about whether something becomes a feature, a product, or a company.
Benefits
- Competitive salary
- Meaningful equity in every venture the studio builds
- 8 weeks off per year (5 weeks vacation + 3 weeks paid holidays)
- Excellent health, vision, and dental insurance (99% of employee premiums paid)
- 401(k) with 4% match
- Life insurance
- Paid parental leave
- Cell phone reimbursement
- High-trust, high-autonomy culture
- Chance to work on multiple high-impact ventures each year
- Remote-first collaboration with occasional in-person team gatherings
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Principal
Education Level
No Education Listed
