Product Engineer, Applications Operations
About the role
Y Combinator is hiring a full-stack product engineer to work at the center of how YC operates — from the application pipeline to events and internal tools. This role sits at the intersection of engineering, product, and operations.
You’ll spend most of your time building production software for both internal teams and founders, while also helping design and improve the processes those tools support. At its core, this role is about turning operational complexity into well-designed software.
We don’t have traditional PMs or designers. Engineers own the product experience end-to-end — from understanding the problem to designing the UI to shipping the system. The right person is excited to create their own interfaces, workflows, and user experiences, not just implement someone else’s specs.
What You’ll Do
Product & Engineering (Core)
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Design, build, and ship full-stack applications powering YC’s admissions pipeline, events platform, and internal tools
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Develop and extend YC’s events platform (Demo Day, meetups, recruiting events, office hours, investor events), including registration, coordination, and media handling
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Integrate with external systems (Google Calendar, Slack, email, data pipelines) to coordinate internal teams, external founders and more
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Build deep AI and search systems (semantic search, embeddings, natural language queries) across large datasets
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Make pragmatic engineering tradeoffs in a fast-moving environment
Process & Automation
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Build systems that automate YC’s admissions workflow (scheduling, notifications, status tracking, email triage, deadlines)
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Improve how applications are routed, interviews are coordinated, and information is surfaced to partners