Product Engineer, Applications Operations

The role

You will build production software for internal teams and founders, including the admissions pipeline, events platform, and internal tools. You will design and improve the processes these tools support by turning operational complexity into software.

What you will do

• Design, build, and ship full-stack applications powering YC’s admissions pipeline, events platform, and internal tools
• Develop and extend YC’s events platform including registration, coordination, and media handling
• Integrate with external systems like Google Calendar, Slack, email, and data pipelines
• Build deep AI and search systems across large datasets
• Build systems that automate YC’s admissions workflow
• Improve how applications are routed, interviews are coordinated, and information is surfaced to partners
• Develop internal tools and copilots using LLMs
• Work directly with partners and ops teams to understand workflows and build better systems
• Create dashboards and analytics to track pipeline health and operational metrics
• Contribute to process improvements during admissions cycles

Required qualifications

• Experience shipping full-stack web applications
• Strong system design and independent decision-making
• Strong product sense and comfort designing user experiences
• Ability to work directly with non-technical stakeholders
• Clear communication skills
• High judgment and integrity

Nice to have

• Experience with Rails, React, Postgres (or similar)
• LLMs, prompt engineering, or agent-based systems
• Workflow automation or integration-heavy systems
• Founder or early-stage experience

Benefits

• Medical
• dental
• vision
• 401(k) + 4% match
• parental leave
• flexible PTO

Before you apply

• Y Combinator is willing to sponsor certain employment visas in accordance with company policy

About the company

Y Combinator is a small, high-trust team of 100 people. Engineers own the product experience end-to-end.