Founding Design Engineer

San Francisco, CA • Full-time, In-person

About Nero

Nero is building the monetization rails for interactive livestreaming. We're infrastructure that works alongside existing platforms like Twitch, Instagram and TikTok to let creators monetize their audiences. We're starting with music, but the model extends to gaming, sports, chess, and any vertical where fans pay for direct creator engagement. Watch one of our artists, Sonny Digital, explaining it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrZXXdcjsWo&t=3946s

And if you couldn't tell already, we aren't another enterprise SaaS company or an AI wrapper startup. We're literally reshaping the way artists earn money through livestreams. Creators have earned over $3M reviewing fan-submitted songs, we're at 600k MAU, and we've raised $1.5M from Yamaha Music Innovation Fund, Antler, and various angels from the music industry.

The Role

You'll be the Founding Design Engineer at Nero, working directly with me (Gabe, CTO) to design and build features that don't exist yet.

We need someone who can own complex product problems end-to-end, from UI to database design.

You'll have significant autonomy to create and ship features that directly impacts 100k+ artists and fans per month. Over time, you'll shape the product, feel, and technical architecture.

What you'll work on:

• You'll design the product and shape how Nero actually feels - like what a fan queue looks like, how an artist sees their revenue, what the submission flow does, etc. Always thinking about how our app looks and feel first.
• You'll build whole features, not just the frontend - the data model, the API, the live state. If the queue needs to update instantly across 500 viewers, you build it. If submissions need a new payment flow, you build that too.

Who You Are

Must-haves:

• 1+ years of professional experience (open to new grads with strong internship experience)
• Experience with TypeScript, React, Node.js, and PostgreSQL
• You're fluent in Claude Code/Cursor/Windsurf
• Opinionated on visual and technical design
• You know what looks good and can implement it
• You own problems and execute without hand-holding and quickly
• Willing to work 50+ hour weeks

Nice-to-haves:

• Built products from 0 → 1 with real users and revenue
• Side projects that show you building in public
• You go to hackathons
• Experience with design tools and building frontend
• Interest in music, creator economy, or livestreaming

Personality-wise:

• You love music and want to help artists and creators
• You're down for adventure. We've worked from Mexico for a month, traveled to music conferences around the US, stuff like that.