Job Details
Job Overview
Responsibilities
Known is shipping a consumer product that replaces swiping and small-talk with a voice-AI onboarding, curated introductions, and agentic workflows for real-world dates. Users speak with an AI assistant for about 25 minutes, which powers matching and follow-ups, and the system books and debriefs dates to fuel reinforcement learning.
Our stack
TypeScript across the stack. React and React Native for web and mobile. Node.js services with REST APIs, WebSockets for chat, and WebRTC for voice or video. Postgres as the system of record. Cloud deploys on AWS or GCP with modern CI/CD. Integrations with OpenAI or Anthropic, payments, reservation systems, and messaging.
Key responsibilities
- Build end-to-end product features across mobile and web, from React Native onboarding and messaging to React web surfaces for discovery and account flows.
- Design and maintain Node.js and TypeScript backends, including REST APIs, background jobs, and data pipelines that support both real-time and batch workloads.
- Implement reliable real-time communication using WebSockets and WebRTC for chat, voice, or video.
- Integrate third-party services such as OpenAI or Anthropic, payment rails, reservation providers, and messaging channels, with strong monitoring and error handling.
- Surface AI outputs in product, from compatibility scores to personalized introductions, through clean APIs and thoughtful UI.
- Own deployment and observability. Set up CI/CD, logging, metrics, alerts, and cost-aware scaling.
- Add product analytics and instrumentation to track funnels, engagement, and system health in real time.
Qualifications
We are hiring a top-tier full-stack generalist who has shipped zero to one products at fast-moving startups and can work across web and mobile with a strong bias toward TypeScript. You will partner with product, design, and AI to turn ideas into live features, own quality and reliability, and keep a tight loop from prototype to production. The ideal person has seen a consumer app scale from seed to Series B or C, has real ownership over APIs and data models, and is comfortable building in React or React Native on the front end and Node.js on the back end. This is an onsite SF role five days a week.
- 4 to 10 years of professional experience building production consumer software in a startup or high-growth environment
- Expert level TypeScript and React for web. Comfortable or willing to work in React Native for mobile
- Strong backend skills in Node.js with experience designing and owning REST or GraphQL APIs, data models, and services that scale
- Solid database experience with Postgres and query performance. Comfort with Redis for caching and background jobs
- Working knowledge of cloud infrastructure on AWS. Able to own CI/CD, observability, and basic production operations for your services
- Proven product ownership. You have led projects from discovery to launch, instrumented metrics, and iterated quickly based on user data
- Experience integrating third-party services and building reliable integrations for messaging, identity, payments, or scheduling
- Strong fundamentals in system design, testing, and reliability. You write clear code, meaningful tests, and ship safely
- Excellent collaboration and communication with product, design, and leadership. You can explain tradeoffs and drive alignment
- Startup readiness. You are happy in a high-context, hands-on environment, move quickly, and take full ownership of outcomes
- Work authorization in the United States and ability to work onsite in San Francisco five days a week
Nice to have
- Experience with recommendation systems, ranking, or feed algorithms. Comfort working with embeddings or LLM-powered features with clear evaluation loops
- Experience building native-feeling mobile experiences in React Native, including offline, push notifications, and app store release flow
- Familiarity with Remix or Next.js, server-side rendering, and performance tuning for interactive web apps
- Prior work with analytics and experimentation frameworks to measure impact and guide iteration
Examples of prior experience we value
- Founding or early engineer at a seed to Series B consumer startup that grew to meaningful scale, where you owned a core surface or service end to end
- Senior full-stack or backend engineer at a product-led company that shipped quickly and handled real user load, such as social, marketplace, or dating products with messaging, profiles, and matching
- Lead engineer for a cross-functional project that launched on both web and mobile and required building APIs, data models, and client features under tight timelines
Ideal Candidate
You are a founding-caliber product engineer who can own major surfaces across mobile and web, move quickly in a tight feedback loop with design and AI/ML, and keep systems fast, reliable, and easy to iterate on. You care about shipping delightful consumer experiences while building the data and API foundations that make voice-AI matchmaking feel magical.
- 4 to 8+ years building production consumer apps in high-growth startups, ideally having shipped a V1 and scaled it meaningfully.
- Strength in TypeScript and React, plus either React Native for mobile or Node.js for backend. Comfortable designing and maintaining REST APIs, real-time features with WebSockets and WebRTC, and data models in Postgres. Hands-on with modern cloud infra and CI/CD.
- Experience integrating third-party platforms and AI services: LLM APIs, payments, reservations, messaging, push, and analytics.
- Product judgment and craft: you instrument what you ship, watch funnels and performance, and raise the bar on UX quality.
- High ownership and collaboration with AI/ML to surface model outputs in product, and to enable clean data flows for training and evaluation.
- Bonus signals: prior work on voice, matching or recommendations, real-time comms, or safety/privacy in consumer products.
Examples of strong backgrounds
- Early engineer or senior IC at a breakout consumer startup that reached product-market fit and scaled usage, owning a mobile or full-stack area end to end.
- Staff-level full-stack or mobile engineer in a team that shipped real-time features, strong data models, and measurable UX improvements.
Example candidate profiles they like
Must-Have Requirements
Must be authorized to work in the U.S. without future visa sponsorship. Able to work onsite in San Francisco, CA five days per week. 4+ years building production software with TypeScript and React, plus hands-on backend experience in Node.js. Proven experience owning a service end to end: designing REST or GraphQL APIs, modeling data in Postgres, and deploying to AWS with basic CI/CD and observability. Experience shipping both web and mobile apps: modern React for web and React Native or native iOS/Android for mobile, including release workflows (TestFlight or Play Store) and analytics/monitoring.
Screening Questions
About the Company
Company Overview
Our Mission
Known is rebuilding how people form relationships. Instead of shallow swipes and endless chat, the product uses voice onboarding, agentic chat, and data-rich signals to deliver curated introductions that become real dates. Users typically speak for about 25 minutes during onboarding, which yields a uniquely rich personal dataset, and in 98 percent of conversations people share more depth than any other consumer product captures.
Curated intros, booked first-date experiences, and post-date debriefs feed reinforcement learning so matching improves over time Backed by top-tier investors (including Accel, NFX and Pear VC) and founded by early engineers from Uber and Faire, we are scaling in San Francisco and building a team that will shape the future of relationships. As one major publication recently noted, generative AI is remapping the world of dating and human connection. Candidates can read more in this New York Times article: (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/03/technology/ai-dating-apps.html?unlocked_article_code=1.yU8.QynF.vV6obDhKbFAK&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare)
If you are excited to build at the intersection of voice, AI, matching and real-life outcomes — and you thrive in environments where product, data and infrastructure are tightly coupled — then Known is where you can make a significant impact.
Company Culture
Known is a small, high-ownership team of engineers and builders who care about deliberate design and real-world outcomes. The bar is clarity in thinking, fast iteration, and respect for both the visible product and the invisible systems underneath it. Engineers shape what gets built, why it matters, and how it scales. The team values asking hard questions, diving into complexity, and treating infrastructure, tooling, and data with the same care as features.
Known operates as an in-person, five-days-a-week team in San Francisco, with a founding group that includes early Uber and Faire talent and two Stanford dropouts who are building for national expansion.
Benefits
Relocation & Sponsorship
What you can expect
Day to Day
You will build and ship features across web and mobile that power Known’s voice-driven dating experience. Most days you will move between coding in TypeScript and React, reviewing PRs, pairing with another engineer, and running quick experiments against real user data. You will integrate with services like reservations, rides, and calendars, work with STT and sentiment outputs, and wire product events into data pipelines that inform matching and introductions. You will sit in the Marina office in San Francisco five days a week with the team, join a short stand-up, collaborate with design and product on specs, and end the day by merging and monitoring what you shipped.
Team
You will join a small founding engineering group and report to a founding engineering lead. You will partner closely with the CEO and product to shape priorities, and with peers across backend, infra, and AI/ML. The team includes early builders from companies like Uber, Faire, and Phia. Everyone ships, reviews code, writes lightweight docs, and owns measurable outcomes. Decision loops are fast and you will have direct access to stakeholders and real users.
Growth
This role has high scope and clear paths for advancement. You can take ownership of a surface area such as matching, voice orchestration, web app, mobile app, or integrations, and grow it from first version to city-scale launch. Strong performance can lead to Staff or Lead ownership, greenfield product work, and hiring and mentoring responsibilities as the team scales across new markets. You will build a public track record of shipping user-visible features that drive real-world outcomes.
Interview Process
Prescreen Checklist (For Recruiters):
- Make sure the candidate has read the relevant one-pager (choose the best fit):
- Walk them through the product tech overview deck: https://www.figma.com/design/fMbQlGiJ0vPHoELqW1MzJA/Known-VC-Decks?node-id=292-5671
- Confirm full working rights in the U.S.
- Confirm willingness to work 5 days per week onsite in the Marina office.
Interview Process:
- Stage 1: Intro call - 30 minutes
- Stage 2: Technical Screen I - 60 minutes
- (CoderPad coding exercise focused on problem solving and clarity in TypeScript.)
- Stage 3: Onsite Technical II - about 3.5 hours total
- ~15 min briefing on a longer prompt.
- ~2.5 hours independent work on the prompt.
- ~45 min presentation and discussion of the solution.
- Policy: Candidate may use editor conveniences and AI tools like ChatGPT or Cursor. Raw correctness can be judged from output. Frontend details are reviewed in the wrap-up.
- Final stage: Company fit - 30 to 45 minutes
- Values alignment, team collaboration style, and onsite expectations. In person.
Companies to Source From
These companies are similar to our client. Candidates with experience at these companies are seen as a big plus.
Additional Information
Additional Information
Known is building a voice-AI dating product that turns long, empty “matching” cycles into curated, real-world introductions. Users onboard by voice for ~25 minutes; conversations capture deep first-party signals that power matching, agentic chat, and date orchestration (reservations, rides, calendars).
Work model: 5 days a week on-site in the Marina (San Francisco). US work authorization required.
Hiring process (what to expect):
- Intro (30 min) with Josh Radvan (DKC) or, for top prospects, Celeste Amadon (CEO).
- Technical Screen (60 min) on CoderPad — Full-stack in TypeScript/React; Infra in Python or TypeScript with light system-design Q&A; AI/ML in Python with an algorithms segment.
- On-site Technical Interview II (~3 hrs) in SF. Full-stack focuses on React/TypeScript (Web/Remix) with editor conveniences allowed; AI/ML receives a hands-on matching prompt (tools allowed).
- Company fit (30–45 min) with Celeste and Asher.
- Candidates will receive a tailored one-pager after the intro to review product, team, and role expectations.
Partnering: Recruiters will connect candidates with the Designated Known Contact (Josh) for fast, clear updates. The team aims to respond within 48 hours at each stage.
Funding & stage: ~$10M total raised with an $8.5M Seed in October; backers include Forerunner, NFX, Accel, and Pear VC.
We’re optimizing for founding-caliber builders who can ship in production, collaborate tightly with design and AI/ML, and raise the bar on performance, reliability, and UX.
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