Founding Software Engineer (Product)

Working at Goodfire

Goodfire’s mission is to advance humanity's understanding of AI by examining the inner workings of advanced AI models (or “AI Interpretability”). As an applied research lab, we bridge the gap between theoretical science and practical applications of interpretability.

We’re looking for agentic, mission-driven, kind, and thoughtful people to help us build the future of interpretability. If you believe understanding AI systems is critical for our future, join us!

Goodfire is a public benefit corporation based in San Francisco, and all roles are full time in person.

The role:

We are looking for a Founding Software Engineer (Product) to join our team and help build intuitive, flexible user interfaces that simplify the complexity of interpretability techniques, making them widely accessible and intuitive to engineers and researchers.

Core responsibilities:

1. Collaborate with the founding team to design and implement the user interface and visualization components of our cutting-edge interpretability software
2. Work closely with our research team to translate novel interpretability techniques into practical, user-friendly features
3. Build scalable and robust backend systems to process and serve interpretability data from large language models
4. Integrate open source models and interpretability techniques into our product using PyTorch
5. Own aspects of our deployment and developer experience – driving continuous improvement through the organization
6. Continuously iterate on the product based on feedback from our trusted partners and evolving research in the field

Who you are:

Goodfire is looking for experienced individuals who embody our values and share our deep commitment to making interpretability accessible. We care deeply about building a team who shares our values:

• High agency: You are self-directed, proactive, and take ownership of your work, setting and accomplishing ambitious goals independently while collaborating effectively with others.
• Constant improvement: You have deep intellectual curiosity and are always seeking to expand your knowledge and reflect on what you could be doing better.
• Strong opinions, loosely held: You foster an environment where well-intentioned disagreement leads to reaching the best solutions. You argue strongly for what you believe and are not afraid to change your mind when you are wrong.
• Deeply mission driven: You understand that the path to building a game-changing interpretability product will not be easy and are prepared to put in the hard work every day. You put the team before yourself and are fully committed to advancing our understanding of AI.
• Thoughtful and pragmatic: You approach your work and interactions with others with nuance and humility. You think deeply about all angles of a problem, not just the one you advocate for. You operate with the understanding that not everything can be perfect.

If you share our values and have at least five years of relevant experience, we encourage you to apply and join us in shaping the future of how we design AI systems.

What we are looking for:

• At least five years of experience in software engineering, with a focus on building intuitive and scalable products
• Strong proficiency in Python
• Experience with PyTorch or other machine learning libraries
• Strong proficiency in building production-grade backend systems and APIs
• Strong proficiency in modern frontend frameworks, preferably Vue.js
• Passion for AI interpretability and a commitment to responsible AI development

Preferred qualifications:

• Experience working in a fast-paced, early-stage startup environment
• Contributions to open source projects or research papers in the field of AI and interpretability
• Familiarity with mechanistic interpretability research and concepts
• Familiarity with linear algebra
• Good design instincts

This role offers market competitive salary, equity, and competitive benefits. More importantly, you'll have the opportunity to work on groundbreaking technology with a world-class team dedicated to ensuring a safe and beneficial future for humanity.

This role reports to our CTO.