Kiki founding full-stack engineer JD Location: Shoreditch, London (in-person 5/6 days a week)
Total compensation: £160-170k (split between salary and shares)
This JD is just a snippet and to apply you need to read our bigger hiring manifesto doc to have a clear understanding of what you'll be building and joining us entails.
How to apply? Link is at the bottom of hiring manifesto below
Kiki hiring manifesto to be our founding engineer
About Kiki: Kiki is an invite-only sublet club. We're not about property, we're solving a deeply human trust problem: how do you feel comfortable sharing your home with a stranger? Our answer: by showing you how you can trust someone through mutual friends and similarity while being an invite-only community so everyone's a friend of a friend.
We have 2 years of runway in the bank, raised £4m to date and have successfully built this over the last 7 years in 4 countries.
We've launched in New Zealand, Sydney and New York matching over 8000 people and earning hosts £2.6m. We are now building London from zero. Within 18 months our goal is to help our hosts earn £8M of rent from matching 20,000 people. In the longer term future we will build the world's first AI-centric global subletting marketplace that acts like your mutual friend (explained in the hiring manifesto). By doing this it will unchain the world from their rent which will impact 1 billion people. Yes 1/8th of the world's population. That's how big this problem is.
The role: You'll be the third member of our founding team and responsible for the entire tech stack and have a lot of ownership over the product. You will sit alongside myself (CEO) and Tems (first generalist hire, running the marketplace).
You'll be building in person, in our Shoreditch coworking space 5-6 days a week. We work 12 hours a day Mon-Fri normally 10-10 but happy to customise the hours if you're a night owl. Open to remote work on weekends. Tems and I work 6.5 days a week and you'll be expected to work 6 days a week and get one day off per week, likely Sunday.
We would love you to get 8 hours of sleep a night (we love sleep and think it's stupid not to)
We prioritise looking after yourself and not burning out (it's a marathon not a sprint)
Product: Our current stack is Typescript, React, Vite, Next.js, Nest.js, Postgres, AWS, Vercel, and Terraform, with the product already built from NYC for London (we are open to changing this when you join). Each new market starts fully manual via Instagram before we flip on feature flags, and in your first months you'll refine the marketplace with features like an interactive map, better search and listing flows, a guest book, connection graphs, and instant matching. From there we'll move toward a native iOS app and an AI-driven marketplace that acts like your mutual friend, powered by over 8,000 real Instagram conversations we've had with users over the last two years - data no one else has. Unlike Airbnb, which optimizes transactions, Kiki is built to optimize trust and relationships, with AI reading between the lines to surface hidden overlaps and show two people how they know each other - and therefore why they can trust each other.
(Explained in detail in the hiring manifesto).
Who you are: We're looking for our first founding engineer in London - a full-stack engineer who loves coding and building, has no ego, learns fast, and can be a scrappy builder. This is not a fit for you if you want to be a people manager or lead a tech team. We just need to build and my aim is to protect your time as much as possible to focus on that.
Most importantly, you want to go on a journey of a lifetime that will be anything but easy with an incredible team who will support the heck out of you but challenge you at the same time. Building a business like ours isn't easy, society will be against you (just google my name and read the articles) but you need to stay strong and keep walking through fire with us. We are searching for someone who will build that deep irrational trust with Tems and I (Toby) to do whatever it takes to achieve this mission and build an exceptional team of close friends.
Skills/experience needed: - Software engineering degree from a reputable university (bachelor is fine)
- Built end to end projects before or worked in a startup building product end to end as one of the main engineers
- Either 1-5 years professional experience or if not 5+ years coding and building experience on your own projects while at uni or before
- Don't need specific AI experience but must be curious and want to learn
Total compensation: £160-170k (split between salary and shares)
- Significant number of shares (these are negotiable depending on salary)
- Free meals 2x a day at least 5x a week
- Free gym membership (up to £50 a month) (Tems and I go to separate gyms 4 times a week)
Note: Please self select out if you don't want to fully invest into our team and mission. This needs to be a mission driven adventure. About having a shot at building a world that we want to live in and doing that with some of the most impressive friends you'll ever build alongside.
That's what we're offering at Kiki and for the right people it will be the greatest thing we ever achieve in our lifetimes.
If you don't know what being a founding engineer means this video from YC is great! Becoming a founding engineer at a YC startup
If you haven't read the bigger hiring manifesto please read that now before applying. The link to apply is at the end of the manifesto.
Kiki hiring manifesto to be our founding engineer
Cheers, Toby x