About the role
Come Work At Cactus!
We are the 24/7 AI copilot built specifically for home services companies (plumbing, HVAC, electrical). It answers every call, qualifies leads, follows up, and books jobs — ensuring no opportunity is ever lost, day or night.
We are a team of builders who are not afraid to create products in the most unconventional way. The co-founders, Ajith and Avinash, have known each other for over 18 years and are on a life mission to help SMBs become wildly successful.
We are just getting started, and our vision is to build the AI Operating System for home services. If you vibe with this and want to be a part of the team, read on!
About Cactus & the team
We're a well-funded (read our latest funding announcement), YC-backed seed-stage startup with a mission to build the AI Operating System for SMBs. We’re still in the early days, and you will get to shape the product. We have seen great traction and product-market fit with customers who love what we’ve built. We've built something truly special that's making a real impact in the small business space.
We're a no-nonsense team of high-performing contributors and builders, and we wear multiple hats. We are in-person, working out of San Mateo.
Here are the core values and principles that define us:
- Product at Core: Our mission is to go beyond utility, sparking joy and delivering real value with product. We design with the user in mind, ensuring that every interaction is meaningful, intuitive, and leaves a smile!
- One Team Always: We are the best of the best, holding ourselves to the highest standards. We push together for collective success—when one wins, we all win; when one struggles, we all step up to support.
- Being Nice: We default to kindness and respect in every interaction. It’s about choosing empathy, practicing patience, and creating a culture where being nice isn’t just encouraged—it’s our natural instinct.
- Focus and Execute: We focus on action and rapid learning, using each experience to drive growth. By building, testing, and refining quickly, we ensure every step brings us closer to a bigger impact.
About the job
We're all-in on Ruby on Rails, and our platform is a majestic monolith with a voice orchestration layer. Of course, we use "AI" with various LLMs, STT, and TTS models. We ship fast and continuously without running in circles, delivering work that matters.
As a founding team member, you'll be working very closely with Avinash, the co-founder & CTO to build the product. I love working with smart people who simply love building products. You will have the autonomy to own and ship features end-to-end. Your role will involve developing new features, shaping the product, building and scaling our AI platform, internal tools, integrations, and most importantly, ensuring our entire tech-stack is robust
About You
You take pride in your work and have always done an excellent job everywhere you've gone. We have an ambitious goal, and as such, we've built a team of A-players. If you want to work with others like you, this is the place. You're a self-starter manager-of-one who can take ownership of large features - architect, build, and deploy them to production independently. You must enjoy writing code (yes, we love to vibecode) and creating delightful products. As with all early-stage startups, you're excited to wear multiple hats and eager to learn.
Having experience building web applications end-to-end with Ruby on Rails is key. Some experience with implementing AI will be a plus! You must also be comfortable with the staples of full-stack web development: HTTP, HTML, JavaScript, and CSS.
We care about what you can do and how you do it, not about your credentials. Whether you have a Computer Science degree or took a different path, what matters to us is your skill set, your mindset, and your ability to deliver.
Perks
- Competitive salary: $120-150k base salary + meaningful equity
- Work in person with an energetic, highly collaborative team!
- Small founder-led, no-nonsense team
- Create a real-world impact
- Build with autonomy
- Company offsite to attractive locations
- Health, dental, life, and vision insurance
About Cactus
HVAC, plumbing, roofing, and electrical companies spend $3K–$25K every month making the phone ring - then lose 10–20% of those leads to slow response times, missed calls, and zero follow-up. The revenue was already there. It just walked out the back door.
Cactus closes that gap on both sides.
Inbound: Every call answered in under 60 seconds, 24/7 qualified and booked directly into Housecall Pro, Jobber, FieldEdge, or ServiceTitan. No voicemails. No missed jobs.
Outbound: Warm leads, dormant customers, and unworked estimates get proactively contacted - driving repeat jobs, cross-sells, upsells, and referrals without adding headcount.
The result: 20–30% more jobs from the ad budget you're already spending.
What that looks like in practice:
→ Roofing company, NC | $299K collected in 10 weeks. $1.41M pipeline created. 199× ROI. $48K of that revenue came in after hours — while the office was closed.
→ Plumbing & HVAC company, UT | $180K confirmed revenue in 4 months. 90× ROI. 58% of captured leads came after hours — jobs that would have gone to voicemail now go straight into the CRM.
→ General contracting company | Grew from 11 jobs/month to 72 in a single month — 555% growth. $2.09M invoiced. $1.82M collected. Zero new hires.
→ Roofing & siding company | $228K pipeline in 75 days. 92% of calls converted to hot leads. $804K in net sales during the Cactus period. 49 spam calls filtered automatically — hours of staff time saved.
→ Commercial signage company | $398K pipeline generated in 10 weeks. 111× ROI on $3,597 invested. Grew from 0% to 30% share of total company pipeline in a single month.
If we don't add revenue, we don't stay. That's the only way this works.
The $150B home services industry is still running on voicemail and spreadsheets. We're building the system that changes that - one answered call at a time.
Required skills
Job details
Salary
$120,000 - $150,000
Location
San Mateo, CA
Experience
3+ years
Funding
Total raised
$7M
Last stage
Seed
Investors
What happens next.
No applications, no recruiter spam. Just the intro.
Confirm the fit
A few questions to make sure this role is the right shape for you. Two minutes.
I pitch you to the company
I write the intro, send it to the founder, and handle the back-and-forth.
A meeting lands on your calendar
If they’re a yes, I book the chat. You show up — that’s the whole job-hunt.