Kobalt Labs - Full-Stack Software Engineer

About the job Kobalt Labs - Full-Stack Software Engineer

Kobalt Labs - Full-Stack Software Engineer

Type: Full-time On-site (NYC, 5 days/week preferred, some flexibility) New York City, NYCompensation: $240,000-$270,000 + 0.5%-1% equityHiring count: 3Visa sponsorship: None to start; company may revisit H-1B transfers and O-1 after the initial search, for exceptional candidates onlyReports to: Founding team - Ashi (CTO & Co-Founder) and Kalyani (Co-Founder)

About Kobalt Labs

Kobalt Labs is a Series A AI startup automating manual risk and compliance operations for fintechs and banks. Its reasoning engine ingests third-party contracts and documentation, internal policies and procedures, legal commitments, and past assessments, syncing with external legislation to auto-surface and track risks - helping fintechs run partner diligence in roughly 1/10 the time without adding headcount. The company hit $1M-$2M ARR within two months of its Series A.

Founded: 2023 Team size: 1-10 (an elite four-person engineering team) Total funding: Series AIndustry: Fintech / Compliance / AIWebsite: kobaltlabs.comOffice: New York City

Engineering team backgrounds: Meta, Affirm (Staff Engineer), and founding CTOs. The team is flat, moves quickly, and ships high-quality product; engineers talk directly to customers and operate at a near-founder level.

Why Candidates Should Join

Near-founder ownership: Drive your own roadmap from direct customer interactions, with a real path to leading expansion into new product areas as the company scales in H2.

Elite, flat team: Four engineers from Meta / Affirm (Staff) / founding-CTO backgrounds, shipping fast at a high bar - the stated internal hiring standard is "if you could get hired at Anthropic, you meet the bar."

Exceptional traction + early equity: $1M-$2M ARR within two months of Series A, with up to 1% equity on the table for early hires. Intake Call Summary

An intake video is present on the Contrario page, but no transcript or intake notes were included in the captured HTML - intake-call detail could not be parsed. If you have the transcript/notes, send them and I'll fold them in. The Role

Kobalt is hiring full-stack engineers to expand two product lines. Engineers ship across the stack, talk to customers weekly, drive the roadmap, and operate at near-founder level.

The 3 openings:

Vendor Risk Management (frontend-leaning) - Own the frontend (React/Next.js) for the vendor risk product: a best-in-class interface for compliance teams managing third-party risk.

Marketing Compliance (backend-leaning) - Own the backend infrastructure (Python/FastAPI): APIs, data pipelines, and systems that power automated compliance review at scale.

Marketing Compliance (ML Engineer) - Own the ML layer: models, eval frameworks, and AI pipelines that make the product intelligent. What You'll Be Doing

Build and ship full-stack features across Python, FastAPI, React, and Next.js

Work directly with customers weekly, translating feedback into improvements that work for all clients, not just one

Drive roadmap items from your own customer interactions and product vision

Build infrastructure and systems that are extensible and scalable, not just fast

Contribute to architectural and technical decisions alongside the founding team

Lead expansion into new product areas as the company grows in H2 Tech stack: Python, FastAPI, React, Next.js

Requirements

4 to 7 years full-stack engineering experience, staff-level thinking

Python and FastAPI backend proficiency

React and Next.js frontend proficiency

High agency, identifies and solves problems without being asked

Customer-facing, can interface with clients weekly

Cares about product quality and real user impact Green Flags

Has worked at or would meet the bar for top-tier companies like Anthropic or Clay

Startup experience, especially building products from zero to one and seeing them grow with real users

Infrastructure or backend engineering background that demonstrates holistic systems thinking

Degree from Caltech, MIT, UIUC, Waterloo, or equivalent top engineering program

Founder mentality, has started something, led something, or talks about their work in terms of outcomes not just implementation

Can articulate how what they built was actually being used, cares about adoption and user impact not just technical elegance Red Flags

Entire career spent at big tech with no startup exposure, often comes with risk aversion and process expectations that do not fit a 7-person team

Talks about their work purely in technical specifications with no connection to whether it was actually used or drove value

Needs structured processes and handoffs to operate effectively

Not willing to be customer-facing

Not based in or willing to relocate to New York City, in-person culture is important to the team

Role Details

Salary$240,000-$270,000Equity0.5%-1%On-site policyNYC, 5 days/week in office preferred with some flexibility; relocation assistance case-by-caseVisa sponsorshipNone to start; may revisit H-1B transfers and O-1 after initial search, for exceptional candidates onlyEmployment typeFull-timeLocationNew York City, NY

Screening Questions

None specified on the Contrario page.

Interview Process

Stage 1 - Pending Approval - Candidates awaiting initial approval.Stage 2 - Intro call with Ashi (CTO & Co-Founder) - Background and project discussion, light technical.Stage 3 - One-on-one conversations with each engineer on the team.Stage 4 - Optional coding interview.Stage 5 - Chat with Kalyani (Co-Founder).Stage 6 - Paid work trial - 2 to 3 days on-site; flights covered for out-of-town candidates.Stage 7 - Offer Extended.Stage 8 - Candidate Hired - Candidate accepts and starts.

Ideal Companies & Backgrounds

Companies surfaced on the Contrario pageTop-tier signal - Anthropic, Clay

(Only 2 companies were displayed on the page; no "Show all" expansion was present, so this list is treated as complete.)

Ideal Candidate Profiles

None provided on the Contrario page.

Rejected Candidate Feedback

None provided on the Contrario page.