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San Francisco, California, United States
Remote only
Location: Remote or San Francisco Bay Area (Preferred)
Format: Full-time
Athena is building the world's first AI tutor that teaches instead of waiting to be asked.
We believe every student deserves a tutor that adapts to them, not the other way around. AI will become the foundation of personalized education, giving every student access to the kind of guidance that today only a small percentage of students can afford.
Today's AI helps students find answers. Athena helps students learn. Our vision is a world where every student has access to a tutor that understands how each student learns. Athena notices when they're struggling. It knows when to encourage, when to challenge, and when to explain differently. That's the future we're building.
We've already launched our first product and are working closely with students across the U.S. The biggest lesson so far is simple: students don't want another chatbot or another video. They want something that understands where they are, guides them toward what's next, keeps them motivated, and makes learning genuinely enjoyable.
All-in-one education wasn't designed around the student. It's a collection of disconnected tools: students bounce between YouTube, ChatGPT, practice platforms, tutoring services, and static materials, stitching together their own learning experience. The best YouTube videos still teach everyone the same way. AI chatbots wait for students to ask the right questions. The best tutors don't. Students need software that understands what they know, what they don't know, and what should happen next.
Athena combines frontier AI with thoughtful product design and learning science to create a tutor that's always available, deeply personalized, and genuinely enjoyable to learn with. We are an incubated company out of super{set}, a San Francisco venture studio that conceives, funds, and builds AI-native companies from formation through scale.
Athena is founded by Kize, whose educational content has reached more than 250,000 learners. The product is already in students' hands, and we're now building the platform that can scale that experience far beyond one creator.
We're looking for our first Founding Engineer who will define Athena as much as the founder does and help build both the product and the technical foundation at Athena.
You'll spend more time debating product decisions with the founder to turn ambitious ideas into software students genuinely love using (instead of implementing tickets). You'll help define our engineering culture, shape the product roadmap, and establish what AI-native learning should look like.
This role goes well beyond engineering execution. Great education products sit at the intersection of engineering, product, design, psychology, and learning science. Every engineering decision changes how someone learns.
We're looking for someone who wants to build a great company, not just write code.
We care as much about how we build as what we build.
The hard problem is building software students trust enough to learn with every day. That means solving personalization, memory, motivation, evaluation, and product design at once.
As Athena's first Founding Engineer, you'll help define what AI-native education looks like. You'll influence not only the architecture, but also the product, the culture, and the standards we build around.
The architectural decisions you make in year one may still shape Athena a decade from now.
You'll own the following across both product and engineering:
At a skill level, you'll work across:
This role spans the entire stack. One week you may be designing a new learning experience or refining how Athena adapts to an individual student. The next week, you may be improving AI evaluation systems, optimizing infrastructure, strengthening engineering foundations, or shipping features inspired directly by student feedback.
During your first 6 to 9 months, your focus will be on three priorities.
We're less interested in your exact technology stack than your judgment, curiosity, and ability to build products people genuinely love.
Please include:
We're looking for someone who wants to invent how millions of students learn with AI, not to implement a roadmap. If that excites you more than the title on your business card, we'd love to meet you.