🤫 Shhhh… Astronomer is hiring
slide into one founder’s DMs and/or get exclusive email access to this CTO’s inbox
Greetings fellow travelers!
I couldn’t help myself: yes, Astronomer has open engineering roles and I’ve linked them below.
Also in this issue: a company bringing AI to manufacturing floors, an invite to slide into one founder’s DMs and another’s inbox.
xoxo,
Jordan
Company Highlight: Squint
So, this is really cool: It used to be that when a factory needed to train new employees on machines, they’d have to partner them up with highly paid senior workers. That’s time and money manufacturers can’t really spare.
Sounds like a task for AI! 🦸🏻♂️
Squint’s augmented reality platform lets companies create their own training modules and troubleshooting guides—so any operator can be an expert. And it’s got all the bells and whistles: spatial navigation, video manuals, digital data entry…and video-to-procedure AI, which lets users convert a video of an expert performing a task into a guided procedure.
Squint was also named one of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies in 2025 in the AR/VR category. They’re looking for engineers in the Bay Area.
Fresh j.o.b.s
Canopy Labs cofounders Amu Varma (Oxford, Z Fellow) and Elias Fizesan (Columbia, Thiel Fellow, Z Fellow) recently launched Orpheus (>5k github stars), a foundation speech model, and are searching for ML Engineers, “cracked college students,” and AI infra engineers to join them in SF.
The Dex team has a similar mission as this publication - specifically, they want to make the job searching process suck much less. They’re hiring engineers, MLEs, a designer, and a sales lead.
The Lovable team just raised an eye-watering $200M, hired one of the most well-respected PLG / GTM experts in the game (ahem, Elena Verna), and is now hiring a community lead.
Avery Krieger is looking for a founding engineer at Constellation, a neuro AI startup still in stealth. Apply here. He was really emphatic on LinkedIn that applicants should follow the directions in the job listing, so…do that.
Marc Papazian at QA automation platform Propolis is looking for a founding engineer and offering a $10K referral bonus for anyone with a good lead.
Asylon, maker of a robot guard dog (!), is looking for a software engineer and a data scientist in Norristown, PA.
Bioinformatics agent Keplogic is searching for its founding AI systems engineer. Read the job posting here, but you can apply by emailing CTO Quinn Leng directly at quinn@keplogic.com.
Debt repayment platform Ditch is hiring a founding engineer. DM the founder Luis Andino on LinkedIn to apply.
AI-enabled contract research procurement platform Cromatic is looking for a founding engineer to work a hybrid schedule out of their SF office.
Military logistics startup Rune Technologies, which just raised a $24M series A to build AI-enabled software for defense, is hiring in Rosslyn, VA.
DataOps platform Astronomer—which hasn’t been in the news at all—is looking for engineers in Hyderabad and in NYC.
Oh - and my team, the a16z speedrun team, is searching for a new investing partner! You can read more about the role in this post, authored by Jon Lai - General Partner at the fund, and hiring manager for the role.
TobyTalks (expert advice on landing that next j.o.b.)
I really like this post on the Wellfound blog about the little things recruiters will remember about you. It’s from an interview with Gloria Dallas, lead recruiter at Snappr (they’re also hiring, btw).
It’s full of good wisdom, but I’ll point our two points in particular:
1) Hard skills might get you the interview, but soft skills will land you the job
Gloria says:
“We have so many people that have all of the hard skills. Usually, we’re not going to interview someone that doesn’t have all of the hard skills... But then the person that we ultimately end up hiring is the person that has the best soft skills out of that group.”
“This means your resume should emphasize technical capabilities, certifications, and specific tools. But in interviews, you need to demonstrate ownership, conflict resolution, customer-facing abilities, and leadership potential.”
2) Warm up a cold application with a friendly message to a recruiter
We all know networking is a more reliable path to getting hired, but what if you simply don’t have an in? Gloria suggests dropping a note like this:
“I’ve been working at this computer vision startup for the last five years. I just saw that Snappr is also working in computer vision and that you have a product management position. I think I'd be a really good fit. Just wanted to let you know that I submitted my application.”
All the news that’s fit to print in my little corner of the in-ter-nit
Vibe coding platform Lovable is now officially a unicorn (just eight months after launch!) with a $1.8 billion valuation. I mentioned them the other week because they’re hiring in Stockholm. They’ve got 2.3 million active users and (not as many) open jobs for you.
Engineers in Latin America are building an alternative to ChatGPT: Latam-GPT.
Some would-be founders are going the blue collar route, and instead, buying up lucrative small businesses and making them bigger.
Tal Raviv over at Lenny’s Letter wrote about “context engineering” and how to build your own AI copilot.
👨🏻💻 Gosh, I’m already thinking of next week and the new gems I’ll have found for you then.
PS… Don’t forget to apply to the a16z talent network. We actually look through the roster, then match applicants to startups!
Funny seeing this now — I already built Spanish and Portuguese AI apps for Latin America months ago. While Latam-GPT is still training, mine are live and helping users every day.