Near AI is building the world's best user-owned open-source AI assistant – and the models, agent network, and privacy-preserving infrastructure powering it. Our mission centers on democratizing access to AI technology that prioritizes human wellbeing above corporate interests. Led by a pioneering AI researcher, we're a small remote-first team with a wide mission covering AI research, infrastructure, and product development.
Near AI’s founders have been involved in groundbreaking AI research, and also previously created the NEAR Protocol, a leading L1 blockchain. We're an AI company, not a crypto company, though we think blockchains can help serve our mission of building user-owned AI for the world.
Role SummaryAs one of the early Senior Software Engineers at Near AI you’ll be a key member of the team from day one. We have lots to do and we prefer to give our engineers great latitude and independence to achieve their goals. In return, we expect you to work hard and to work smart, leveraging the latest AI tools to build software with higher quality and more rapidly than any engineer could have just a few months ago.
As a lean startup, we don’t yet have formal levels or differentiated titles for our engineering roles, but we do value your experience and expertise and offer commensurate compensation and responsibilities.
We value engineers who balance technical excellence with pragmatic delivery, to build rock-solid technical foundations and leverage them to ship and iterate rapidly. The ideal candidate brings a user-oriented mindset and can make thoughtful independent decisions on our users’ behalf.
Together we’ll figure out your best fit within Near AI, whether that’s building our new consumer application, our platform for agent developers and model builders, the underlying hosted infrastructure, or our AI research efforts.
What You Will Do- Design and implement core features across our stack using Python, TypeScript, and/or Rust
- Make thoughtful decisions about user and developer experience details without constant PM or design input
- Determine appropriate engineering investments based on business context
- Develop scalable, reliable code with appropriate testing and documentation
- Collaborate effectively in our fully remote but synchronous environment
- Strong engineering background with experience building and scaling production software
- Product-oriented mindset: you instinctively consider user impact in technical decisions
- Pragmatic approach to engineering: you know when to build for the long term vs. when to ship and iterate
- Familiarity or expertise in our tech stack (Python, TypeScript, a little Rust). If your expertise is in Python, you must also be an advocate for strong typing and robust technical architecture.
- Experience with AI systems and infrastructure is strongly beneficial for most positions but not strictly required
- Self-directed work style with minimal supervision but maximal collaboration
- Impact: Work on a genuinely important mission with potential for significant social impact
- Growth: Join early with significant advancement and leadership potential, learn from respected industry leaders in AI research, attend and speak at industry events
- Culture: Join a collaborative and passionate team, help shape company culture and technical direction from the ground up
Locations: San Francisco or remote
Skills Required
- Experience building and scaling production software
- Product-oriented mindset, considering user impact in technical decisions
- Pragmatic engineering judgment to balance long-term design and rapid shipping
- Familiarity or expertise with Python, TypeScript, and some Rust (Python expertise should include strong typing and robust architecture)
- Experience with AI systems and infrastructure
- Ability to develop scalable, reliable code with appropriate testing and documentation
- Self-directed work style with minimal supervision and strong collaboration
- Comfort working in a fully remote but synchronous environment
What We Do
NEAR AI is an artificial intelligence research, engineering, and product development company committed to building an AI future owned by everyone. Founded by AI pioneer and former Google Deepmind researcher Illia Polosukhin, NEAR AI’s verifiable private inference infrastructure empowers developers and enterprises to deploy AI models with full control over their data. With hardware-backed private inference via a simple API, NEAR AI Cloud runs sensitive AI workloads securely and at scale, from privacy-critical consumer interactions to autonomous systems and critical infrastructure. NEAR AI Private Chat brings the same guarantees to users’ everyday questions and research. Serving over 100 million users across platforms such as Brave Nightly and OpenMind, NEAR AI is proven infrastructure for transforming sensitive data into safe intelligence and advancing a user-owned AI future. Learn more at https://near.ai/.
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