Who We Are

Playlab puts the power of AI into the hands of people who are already building the most human part of our future – teachers, students and impact organizations.

When the programming language is English, anyone can build sophisticated applications. Those who will responsibly build the next generation of tools:

• Have a deep grasp of the problems they want to solve;
• Are fearless about experimenting with the technology;
• Feel confident that their work will not violate their most deeply held principles.

As a nonprofit technology startup building public educational AI infrastructure, we make it possible for educators and mission-aligned entrepreneurs to invent the future with AI.

These users already know the most pressing problems that education must solve. Playlab makes it easy for them to build, share and remix educational AI applications that continually improve.

During our closed beta, more than 3,000 educators have built 4,000 tools that have been used over 80,000 times to support real teaching and learning. Now we need you to help Playlab get to the next level.

Principal Fullstack Engineer

You will lead the architecture and implementation of our brand-new platform built on Remix, collaborating closely with the team and users to empower them to build the next generation of AI-native educational experiences. Along the way, you’ll improve our systems and processes and help build out the engineering team.

You at a Glance

• 7+ years building fullstack interactive web applications
• Capable of designing simple yet resilient system and application architectures
• Highly collaborative working style and able to communicate ideas and decisions well
• You’ve led at least one product-focused engineering team
• Proficient in Typescript, React and Node
• Competent in cloud deployment and cloud management practices (e.g. kubernetes)
• Care about the monitoring, alerting and processes that reduce risk so the team can sleep easily at night
• Interested in and want to learn about the latest AI technologies
• Bonus: worked on creative or educational platforms in the past
• Bonus: experience with Remix

You are likely to love it here if

• You want to play a key role in building a team with a culture and a mission you can be proud of
• You’ve worked on a variety of different kinds of applications and architectures and want to bring the best of what you’ve learned to a brand new system
• You’re excited about helping integrate AI into education and the idea of building AI-native experiences
• You want to architect systems as well as write code on a day-to-day basis
• Good development, release and team process practices are table stakes for you
• You thrive working quickly and iteratively on a solid foundation guided by user research and metrics
• You’re realistic in the short term, idealistic in the long term
• You believe that we can improve society by improving education

Benefits

• Competitive salary while working for a mission-drive cause.
• Flexible work schedules and unlimited PTO, at least 15 days per year
• Fully paid and trans-inclusive health, dental, and vision insurance for employees and 80% coverage for their families
• $1,000 home-office setup allowance for all new full-time remote employees
• Get reimbursed up to $100/month for activities that enhance your wellbeing
• Twice annual fully paid whole team retreats

Application Process

1. Include a brief note about your interest in working at Playlab, sent to careers@playlab.ai
2. 30 minute get to know each other call with a founder
3. Provide an existing work sample
4. 60 minute deep dive/technical call with a founder to align on your skillset

Hiring Process

In lieu of take home tests or online coding challenges, Playlab follows a paid contract-to-hire process where both sides get the benefit of working together to determine fit. We feel this is the fairest and most reasonable way for us both to decide whether to make a long term investment.

Contracts will be paid at market rates and span 2-4 weeks calendar time depending on your availability. We’ll accommodate your schedule while also working on real tasks together. At a minimum, it should be fun and you’ll get paid. If it’s a long term fit, we’ll make you a full-time offer before the end of your contract period.