Engineering work starts with context and ends with code. Everything between, that's where Substrate lives.
What we
look for.
Build
Designers of the layer: context model, Variant registry, trust calibration, orchestration. Get excited by "what is the right shape of this" before the code.
Optimize
Not tenure. Not titles. Not hours. Demonstrated impact gets the responsibility, and the compensation.
Operate
The category did not exist eighteen months ago. No pre-existing playbook. Confident enough in first principles to derive one as you go.
What we don't look for.
Legacy consultancies. Enterprise IT. Traditional systems integrators. If the shape of that work has been going sideways, you are in the right place. A few patterns we pass on, every time.
Patterns we pass on
- 01Career consultants looking for a glossier logo
- 02Engineers who want to be "AI-adjacent" but don't want the AI to do most of the work
- 03People looking for seniority conferred by time rather than evidence
- 04…anyone who conflates "strategy" with "not shipping"
Flat. Distributed. Substrate-native.
High autonomy. High accountability. Impact is visible, and so is its absence.
See open rolesFlat organization
No middle management between engineers and decisions. Leads own outcomes, not head counts.
Distributed by default
Three continents: North America, Asia, Europe. Core engineering and Labs run follow-the-sun. Remote by default; in-office only where it actually matters.
Substrate-native
You will not be writing code Substrate could have written. You will be writing the code that makes Substrate better, or the code Substrate explicitly needs a human for.
High autonomy, high accountability
Outcomes are yours, end-to-end. We don't micromanage; we measure. Impact is visible, and so is its absence.
Open roles.
No open rolesApply
We hire the person, not the requisition.
If you don't see a role that fits but you think you'd be valuable here, keep an eye on this page.