Investment Associate & Product Engineer

Department: Software

Location: San Francisco Bay Area

Employment Type: FullTime

Y Combinator is looking for a full-stack product engineer who also wants to apply their skills to investing, diligence, and founder support. This role sits at the intersection of engineering, product, and investing. You will spend much of your time writing production code — building internal and founder-facing tools — while also contributing directly to company evaluation and investment decisions.

This is not two jobs stitched together. The core of the role is turning judgment into software: using code to improve how YC evaluates companies, supports founders, and scales its impact after the batch.

What you'll do:

• Product & Engineering (core responsibility)

  • Design, build, and ship full-stack web applications for partners, founders, and investors

  • Own features end-to-end: scoping, design, implementation, and iteration

  • Work across frontend, backend, and data layers to improve YC's post-batch and internal platforms (e.g., founder tools, analytics, workflow systems)

  • Make pragmatic engineering tradeoffs in a fast-moving, high-ownership environment

• Investing & Analysis

  • Evaluate post-batch and growth-stage companies by analyzing business models, markets, teams, and operating metrics

  • Contribute to diligence efforts, including reviewing decks and data rooms, benchmarking KPIs, and conducting market or customer research

  • Build and maintain analytical tools, dashboards, or workflows that support investment decisions

  • Write clear, structured memos and analyses for partners and our Investment Committee

This role is ideal for someone who:

• Is a strong full-stack engineer and enjoys owning production software

• Likes talking to users and senior stakeholders to decide what to build

• Is curious about investing and wants hands-on exposure

• Prefers ownership and impact over narrowly scoped tickets

• Is energized by ambiguity and comfortable making tradeoffs

• Can translate ambiguous questions into concrete products, systems, or analyses

Successful candidates have been:

• Former founders or early-stage engineers

• Product-minded engineers who've worked closely with business or finance teams

• Engineers with prior exposure to investing, finance, or company analysis

What we're looking for:

• Required

  • Experience shipping full-stack web applications

  • Ability to design systems and reason about tradeoffs independently

  • Strong analytical thinking; comfort with metrics and financial concepts

  • Clear written and verbal communication

  • Excellent judgment, integrity, and ability to work with sensitive information

• Not required, but helpful

  • Experience with Rails, React, Postgres, or similar frameworks and databases

  • Prior experience in venture capital, growth equity, banking, consulting, or corporate development

  • Founder or early-stage startup experience

  • Experience building internal tools, analytics platforms, or workflow software

  • We care far more about your ability to build and ship real software than about any specific framework. If you've built strong full-stack products before, you can learn our stack.

How we work: YC operates with a small, high-trust team. Roadmaps evolve organically, priorities shift quickly, and people are expected to use good judgment rather than wait for perfect specs. Engineers have real autonomy and work closely with partners and founders to build things that matter.

Location: Based in the San Francisco Bay Area (or willing to relocate)

Compensation: $250K to $500K base salary, depending on experience. YC has a profit-sharing program, which is comparable to equity in an early-stage startup or carry in a VC fund.

Benefits: Our full benefits package includes medical, vision, and dental plans, infertility benefit, STD/LTD, life insurance, commuter benefits, flexible spending account, health savings account, 401(k) + 4% matching, generous parental leave, paid holidays, and flexible paid time off policy.

Important Note: This role is not a fit if you're looking for:

• A pure investing or finance role with little hands-on building

• A pure engineering role with tightly defined specs and limited product ownership

• A highly structured environment with rigid roadmaps

Work Authorization: Y Combinator is willing to sponsor certain employment visas in accordance with company policy.

Legal note: Y Combinator considers qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state, and local law, including San Francisco’s Fair Chance Ordinance. Y Combinator is committed to protecting the privacy of the personal information of job applicants and complying with the California Consumer Privacy Act. The privacy policy of Ashby, Inc., the hiring platform used by Y Combinator, governs the collection of such data and can be found here.