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# Product Engineer (Applications Operations)

- **Company:** Y Combinator
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA, United States
- **Salary:** $250,000.0
- **Contract:** Permanent contract
- **Skills:** Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, Decision Support Systems, Google Calendar, PostgreSQL, AI-enabled Products, Search Technologies, Workflow Management Systems, ReactJS, Large Language Models, Prompt Engineering, Backend, Agentic-AI, Build Tools, Front End Software Development, Data Pipelines, Natural Language Interfaces
- **Published:** November 7, 2026
- **Apply:** https://www.juju.com/job/28_25196_be17adef69fb764482f750f7fcef571f

## About the Role

* Are a strong full-stack, product-minded engineer who enjoys owning products, not just code
 * Love using AI in your work -- your dev stack is fully AI-enabled and you've built AI-enabled products or prototypes
 * Like turning messy, high-stakes workflows into clean, usable systems
 * Want to make product and UX decisions directly, without waiting on PMs or designers
 * Are low-ego and comfortable getting along with everyone in our 100-person company
 * Are comfortable with ambiguity and making tradeoffs

Backgrounds That Tend to Succeed

 * Product-minded engineers who've built internal tools or workflow systems end-to-end
 * Engineers with experience in building full stack applications or workflow software
 * Former founders or early-stage startup engineers
 * Engineers who have owned both backend systems and frontend/user experience, Required
 * Experience shipping full-stack web applications
 * Strong system design and independent decision-making
 * Strong product sense and comfort designing user experiences
 * Ability to work directly with non-technical stakeholders
 * Clear communication skills
 * High judgment and integrity

Nice to Have

 * Experience with Rails, React, Postgres (or similar)
 * LLMs, prompt engineering, or agent-based systems
 * Workflow automation or integration-heavy systems
 * Founder or early-stage experience

We care more about your ability to build and ship complete products than any specific stack.

## Description

* Design, build, and ship full-stack applications powering YC's admissions pipeline, events platform, and internal tools
 * Develop and extend YC's events platform (Demo Day, meetups, recruiting events, office hours, investor events), including registration, coordination, and media handling
 * Integrate with external systems (Google Calendar, Slack, email, data pipelines) to coordinate internal teams, external founders and more
 * Build deep AI and search systems (semantic search, embeddings, natural language queries) across large datasets
 * Make pragmatic engineering tradeoffs in a fast-moving environment

Process & Automation

 * Build systems that automate YC's admissions workflow (scheduling, notifications, status tracking, email triage, deadlines)
 * Improve how applications are routed, interviews are coordinated, and information is surfaced to partners
 * Develop internal tools and copilots using LLMs (email classification, workflow automation, natural language interfaces)
 * Eliminate manual work so the team can focus on high-leverage decisions

Operations & Decision Support

 * Work directly with partners and ops teams to understand workflows and build better systems
 * Create dashboards and analytics to track pipeline health and operational metrics
 * Contribute to process improvements during admissions cycles