some guy told me it was impolite to refer to readers as "sunshine" - he's ngmi, but you are
also: a guide to startup job searching, and a 2026 summer internship w/ free housing!
☀️ Good Morning, Sunshine ☀️
Today’s newsletter is extra beefy. Like a hefty bolognese topped with polpette 🤌
how to get a job at Doctronic
a long-form guide to landing a startup job in 2025 (with the TL;DR)
video instructions on nailing the skill both OpenAI and Anthropic call essential
a summer 2026 internship w/ housing included
Random off-topic - someone wrote me last week saying it was “not polite” to address you all as Sunshine.
Literally just helping and sharing jobs and people be crashing out over a salutation. Goodness.
Company spotlight: Doctronic
Doctronic is making that easier than ever with their personal and private AI doctor. And they’re hiring.
Doctronic’s co-founder Matt Pavelle gave me the scoop on who/what they’re looking for. And why you shouldn’t email him directly (please).
What are you doing?
We are trying to bring high-quality health care to everyone in the world and maybe even do it for free.
What’s it like over there?
We’re all very high energy, but we’re all very respectful. We’re actually pretty chill. Everyone has fun. We’re not looking for anybody that’s going to be pushy or abrasive. We’re a pretty flat-org. There’s no, ‘this person is the boss, and what this person says goes.’ We’re looking for people who are willing to share their ideas and have helpful things to say, but we always come to a consensus.
Who are you looking for?
We very specifically hire folks that have tried to start their own company. We’re hiring anyone that has startup experience, but we’re really selecting people that have tried. Right now, we’re only hiring very senior folks.
I’d love for this company to be wildly successful: Get your first $20 million out of it and then you can go start another company. We’re really going for people that can figure everything out by themselves.
What do you want from engineers?
There are some engineering teams that want to have these big, lengthy spec docs that outline everything. We’re the opposite of that. Here’s how we work:
Anyone on the team might have a suggestion of something that we need to build.
We’ll have a couple of sentences that roughly describe what we’re looking for.
An engineer is expected to be able to grab that as a ticket, think about how they would solve it, talk with other engineers, write their own very lightweight spec document on how they would build it out.
We review it.
The engineer builds it.
What about your marketing hires?
We have been looking for people to help with SEO, because we get a lot of organic. Now there’s AIO or GEO for getting into all of the primary foundational LLMs. We need people to help with that. We are hiring people to help manage our paid campaigns. Then we have a lot of influencers we’re working with. We have people on the social side. There are a lot of roles because there’s a lot of expansion that we want to do.
How can my friends get in touch?
Honestly, the thing that I really don’t like is when somebody emails me directly. I get a thousand emails a day. If you’re filling up my inbox, I’m just going to delete it. That’s a shitty answer, but it’s the truth. All our jobs are on Ashby. You should just apply and do your best in the application process.
Open j.o.b.s.
Lots of hot and fresh series A startups coming at you this week!
Autonomous AI recruiter Alex, which announced a $17 million series A this week, is hiring across engineering, marketing, ops, sales… and a talent lead! All jobs are on site at their SF offices.
Vibe coder Anything is recruiting its founding team. These jobs are on site at their SF offices. They’re coming at you with a brand new $11 million series A this week.
🚨 (REMOTE) - Succinct “is the decentralized prover network that makes zero knowledge easy for everyone,” and they need people, people! The company is hiring for mostly SF-based roles, though some can be REMOTE. Take a look at the full list here, but a few highlights include a senior cryptography engineer and, for the writers out there, a content marketer with growth marketing experience.
Antimetal is using AI to manage and automate software infrastructure. They have 12 open jobs across engineering, design, sales, and ops. Jobs are on site at their NYC HQ.
🚨 (REMOTE) - Stablecoin global payment app Sling Money needs engineers and a (REMOTE!) controller, a product designer, and a few engineers. They tout both flexible work hours and flexible work locations.
AI-native investment bank OffDeal is hiring in NYC. Think engineering, biz dev, an EA, and an investment banker. They’re also looking for a fullstack software engineering intern for summer 2026 (housing included!)
🚨 (REMOTE) - Scrunch, which helps brands get seen in AI results (think SEO for AI engines), is hiring in the U.S. and Brazil. Some jobs are REMOTE!
AI-powered recruiting platform Juicebox, with their tasty $30 million series A, has 10 open positions at its SF HQ across design, engineering, growth, recruiting, and sales. I actually told my finance team today that we can cancel our LinkedIn Recruiter subscription after 13 years of devout use… specifically because Juicebox is a superior product. If that tells you anything about how good they are.
Dataframe startup Polars is hiring engineers based out of their office in Amsterdam. This “open source library for data manipulation” announced a $29 million series A this week.
Blacksmith is on a mission to build a CI cloud. With their brand new $10 million series A, they’re hiring engineers (in NYC) and some GTM folks (in SF).
Austin Tackaberry (ex-Databricks, ex-Uber) is looking for a founding engineer for his enterprise time-management platform ShareCal.
Shift is making an AI-native infrastructure for healthcare workforce operations. Co-founder Autumn-Kyoko Cushman is looking for a head of engineering ($200K–$400K) and a few founding engineers ($150K–$300K) in SF. They’re also offering a $15K referral bonus for leads. Email ashley@shiftrx.io to apply.
Toby talks
Hannah Zhang over at Nonlinear Techies wrote a super detailed post on how she landed a job at a marketing startup in 2025. It’s v good. (Okay, I’m mentioned in it, so maybe I’m partial. But she’s not wrong!) As a LinkedIn power user, I like this tip:
⚡️Make LinkedIn Your Landing Page⚡️
For both of my last startup offers, no one ever asked for my resume. They had my LinkedIn. What mattered was the experience and aptitude I showed in interviews and take-home assignments. So:
Make your LinkedIn profile easily digestible by a founder, hiring manager, or recruiter. It’s not rocket science - have a profile pic, a summary that sounds like a human wrote it, and include keywords in your headline that someone searching for your target role would use.
Engage with posts in your industry. This helps your profile get seen.
Consider posting IF it communicates your value (e.g., if you’re in product, show how you built something; if you’re in marketing. Posting is literally a way to market yourself, and it may help you rank higher when people hiring for talent search for your title). More and more startup founders in 2025 are building personal brands on LinkedIn, so no, it’s not cringe.
For certain industries, Twitter may serve a similar purpose (e.g. crypto, VC, etc.)
Required reading/viewing 🥸
My team is hosting an IRL “intro to speedrun” event at the a16z offices next Wednesday, and we’re inviting students + early career builders to join - apply here to attend!
From me to you special: why the job is the least important part of your next role.
The pitch deck Alyx van der Vorm used to raise $14 million for social app Clyx. BI reports that van der Vorm will use some of that to add engineers soon. I’ll keep an eye out for you 👀
AI evals are a critical skill for AI product builders (says both Anthropic’s and OpenAI’s CPOs). Here’s a video guide on what they are, how to create them, and common mistakes to avoid.
Is it national 996 month or something? I’ve seen, like, six different headlines about it. So, here’s a quick primer if you’re not working that schedule, and if you are, I’m surprised you have time to read this.
Peace and love to everyone, especially the 996ers. Hope you’re hanging in there.
Ciao!
Jordan
That’s right.