About Pencel
Pencel builds a local-first desktop application for business teams that use AI in day-to-day operations. The company is early-stage. The founder previously led applied AI work at AWS and data science at Ford.
The role
You will design and build a substantial part of Pencel's AI product, working directly with the founder. You will own product decisions and implementation for the work you take on: what customers need, whether it is good enough to ship, and the quality of what they receive.
Responsibilities
- Design, build, and ship features for an AI product, from early definition through release.
- Own the work you take on, including the experience a customer has with it.
- Proactively identify opportunities and improve the product.
- Use taste and judgment to decide what is ready to ship.
- Contribute to architecture and technical direction as the product grows.
- Work across the stack, including the desktop application, local data, and the services it connects to.
- Work with the founder to set priorities and scope.
- Improve reliability, performance, and test coverage.
- Help establish engineering practices for a small team.
Qualifications
- You have built and shipped production software.
- Strong programming skills.
- Experience working across more than one part of a product, such as interface, services, and data.
- You communicate clearly in writing.
- You have the agency to proactively identify opportunities and improve the product.
- You are proficient with AI coding tools such as Claude Code, Codex, and similar tools.
Preferred qualifications
- Experience building impressive technical products in the AI domain.
- Experience building products that use large language models, agentic systems, or other machine learning systems.
- Early-stage or founding engineering experience.
How to apply
Send a short note with your LinkedIn or GitHub profile, and attach a resume if you have one. The founder reviews applications.