iOS Design Engineer

We want to be the first thing one billion people think of when they think of books.

We've started with a high-craftsmanship native iOS app to track and discover books, targeting the 20 million Americans who read a book a week and the hundreds of millions who aspire to read more.

Since launching on Christmas Eve, we've had 100,000 users track 13 million books and log 250,000 hours of reading time.

Now we're looking for an SF-based iOS Design Engineer to help us win an Apple Design Award.

You

Must-haves:

Could get a job as either a designer or as a SwiftUI engineer

Has shipped multiple native iOS apps to the App Store

Can work in-person in SF 2 days/week

Nice-to-haves:

Has worked at an early-stage startup recently

Can spend hours listing all the things you want to improve about the app

Has founded a company before

Tends to stick around for multiple years

Is often described as "obsessive" about your work

Can name at least 3 books that changed your life

Us

We are...

Paul (Founder & CEO, SF)

Paulo (Founding Engineer, Brazil)

Nick (Founding Designer, SF)

Mill Valley Library, CA

Between us, we've…

Read 5,000+ books

Founded 5 companies ($35m+ raised)

Led product, software, and AI at startups that have raised $300m+

Written open source Swift libraries with 5,000+ stars

Built social apps, AI apps, and a Kindle competitor (Daylight)

Studied CS, Education, and Business at Stanford

Advisors and investors include the founder of Goodreads, the Head of Marketing at Notion, the founder of Twitch, book influencers, and authors of books that have sold millions of copies.

The Work

Developing exploratory prototypes, often in collaboration with our designer

Shipping production features that will delight millions of people

Improving the craftsmanship of the app through great transitions, micro-interactions, and other touches that elevate the app to the sublime

Work with 3d animation and other technologies to bring the app to life and add physicality to the design (a la Stripe Press)

FAQ

Stack? SwiftUI (local-first, MVVM, Structured Concurrency, @Observable), Supabase, GraphQL, TypeScript, Next.js, Vercel, Python

Compensation range? 120-160k cash, 0.5-0.8% equity, US health insurance

In-person? 2 days/week in-person in SF

Runway? 3+ years

Monetization strategy? Subscriptions, book sales, publishing

Product references? Spotify, Duolingo, Netflix, Day One, Instagram Stories

Why now? LLMs, BookTok, self-publishing, creator economy, enshittification of socials

Books recs? Gideon the Ninth, Braiding Sweetgrass, Blindness