Ask HN: Who is hiring? (August 2025)

Ploid AI | Barcelona, Spain | HYBRID (preferably on-site) | Founding Engineers | Full-time + Equity

We’re building an AI-first bioinformatics platform to empower plant breeders and life science researchers with agentic AI and LLMs. Backed by pre-seed funding and real demand from biotech and seed companies, we’re looking for versatile founding engineers to help us shape the future of AI in genomics.

What you’ll do:

• Architect and build AI workflows, agentic interfaces, and data pipelines

• Work across the stack: Go, Python, TypeScript

• Contribute to system design, infrastructure (AWS, Docker, Terraform), and devops

• Collaborate closely with scientists and iterate from prototype to product

• Help define our technical culture and roadmap as a core founding member

Nice-to-haves (not all required): LLM integration, RAG systems, gRPC, scientific computing, cloud/on-prem hybrid systems

About us: We’re an early team of engineers and scientists with strong academic and industry backgrounds (ex-BCG, PhD in Plant Biotech, M.Sc. AI). We’re committed to building something impactful, technical, and genuinely useful for life science.

Apply: hello@ploid.ai

More about us: https://ploid.ai

We also consider internship requests from strong student candidates.

Privacy-focused AI Project | Founding Engineer | Remote - Europe (UTC-1 to UTC+3) | Full-time | Base salary + Up to 4% equity

We are building a truly private, open-source LLM gateway with outstanding user experience to address privacy problems around using LLMs. When we interact with AI-based services, we face the fundamental tension between utility and privacy. Current solutions to this problem are inadequate, so we are ready to build what we couldn't find.

Who are we? A well-funded, bootstrapped venture by the founders of IVPN - a VPN service highly regarded by privacy advocates and analysts, in operation since 2009.

We are looking for a Founding Engineer (based in Europe) to architect and build an MVP from the ground up. This is a role for a senior builder with:

- At least 8 years of professional experience

- Demonstrable history of solo-shipping products

- Deep expertise across the stack (e.g., Go/Rust for backend, React/Vue for frontend)

- Strong security and infrastructure automation mindset

What you can expect:

- Founder-funded, sovereign startup = no VCs and external pressure

- Small, dedicated, 100% remote team that prefers pragmatism and maximum autonomy.

- Complete technical ownership, responsible for building a system designed for high availability and verifiable privacy.

- Sole focus on engineering - zero distractions. Founders own strategy, functional requirements, design, communications, legal and all other business related decision and execution.

- Strong salary and a significant, foundational equity stake (up to 4%).

If you're a self-directed, experienced engineer who wants to build the foundational infrastructure for private, trustworthy AI access, email me at viktor at ivpn.net for a one-page project brief.

Full Time and Part Time roles

Distark is hiring, an edutainment brand building learning videos for Education. Our small, passionate team creates animated shows and learning tools that help kids (ages 3-9) fall in love with curiosity and real-world learning. We use custom automation to speed up everything from story writing to animation. See what we’re making: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c46VaM_VZGU An example of some of our software, ChatGPT for families: https://www.studyturtle.com/ask

Open Roles (REMOTE):

Animators (2D/3D or hybrid—experience with AI tools a plus)

Junior Software Developers (Python, Node, JS, or open to learning new tech)

Interns (all backgrounds, generalists, tech, or creative)

Important: You must be a parent (of any age child) We want people who care deeply about kids and learning. Lived experience as a parent is essential—our mission is to build things real families want.

Why join us?

Fully remote, async-friendly Ship real things that impact how kids learn Fast, creative, zero-corporate-BS environment

Direct access to founders; real ownership

Opportunity to shape our tools and shows from the ground up

To apply: Email jobs [at] studyturtle.com with your background, a few sentences about your kids, and why this mission excites you. Please include links to any relevant work.

We are the hiring company and will reply to all genuine applicants. No recruiters, no agencies, please.

Incredibly high quality job posting. But you’re not hiring any programmers. Sad.