Full-stack/Product Engineer

About sync.

We’re a team of artists, engineers, and researchers building tools to understand and modify people in video — in the last year we graduated at the top of our YC batch (W24), raised a $5.5M seed backed by GV, won the AI grant from Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross, and scaled to millions in ARR from 0.

We’re building a zero-shot generalized video model to understand, generate, and gain fine-grained control over any human in any video. We’ve already released a state-of-the-art generalized lip-syncing model for content translation and word-level video editing — you can access our models through our developer playground and API.

We had a research breakthrough — we learned a highly accurate generalized representation of a human face. tldr; this unlocks many new editing tasks that have never been possible before. 

As we build out these model capabilities, we need to expand our product team to bring this magic into the hands of users.

What are we working on?

We live in an extraordinary time. 

Video generation is world modeling. Deep learning unlocked the ability to decipher the world around us, to understand it, to compress its data and information into a 70b param network plus weights.

By simply changing these underlying numbers – these latent representations — we can reimagine and reconstruct reality in any way we see fit.

This is profound. A high schooler can craft a masterpiece with an iPhone. A studio can produce a movie at a tenth of the cost 10x faster. Every video can be distributed worldwide in any language with perfect preservation of meaning, instantly. Video becomes as malleable as text.

But we have two fundamental problems to tackle before this is a reality:
[1] Large models are great at generating entirely new scenes and worlds, but struggle with precise control and fine grained edits. The ability to make subtle, intentional adjustments – the kind that separates good content from great content – doesn’t exist.

[2] If video generation is world modeling, each human is a world unto themselves. We each have our idiosyncrasies that make us unique — creating primitives to capture, express, and modify them is the key to breaking through the uncanny valley.

While our focus in research is to push the boundary on what’s possible through new models and pipelines, our focus in product is to design and ship intuitive experiences that delight users and provide maximal utility.

Key Responsibilities

• Architect and build intuitive experience to create and edit video with AI – from magical UX to scalable APIs

• Own complete user journeys: ideation, prototyping, shipping, and rapid iteration based on user data

• Interface seamlessly between model capabilities and intuitive user workflows

• Design and implement product features that become industry standards

• Champion performance, reliability and developer experience at scale

Required Skills and Experience

• Exceptional full-stack engineer who has built technical products users love and businesses can build on top of

• Deep expertise in React ecosystem, modern API design, and real-time systems. Our current stack is NextJS, tRPC, and NestJS

• Strong product and design sensibilities - you know what makes an experience feel like magic

• Track record of shipping and owning 0 to 1 features that drove massive impact

• Experience with video manipulation, creative tools, or ML interfaces

• Experience working on fast and talented engineering teams with strong work ethics, and understanding how to collaborate and ship exceptional products 

Preferred Skills

• Built and scaled systems handling millions of daily active users

• Background implementing complex usage based billing systems

• Strong opinions on developer tooling and engineering productivity

• Experience with WebGL, Canvas, or video processing

• Comfort with ambiguity and rapid iteration

Outcomes

• Build breakthrough features that define the future of AI video creation

• Create abstractions and APIs that accelerate entire team's velocity

• Drive 10x improvements in key metrics through technical innovation

• Set new standards for performance and reliability at scale

• Help us grow from $2M to $200M+ ARR by building things users can't live without

Our goal is to keep the team lean, hungry, and shipping fast.

These are the qualities we embody and look for:

[1] Raw intelligence: We tackle complex problems and push the boundaries of what's possible.

[2] Boundless curiosity: We're always learning, exploring new technologies, and questioning assumptions.

[3] Exceptional resolve: We persevere through challenges and never lose sight of our goals.

[4] High agency: We take ownership of our work and drive initiatives forward autonomously.

[5] Outlier hustle: We work smart and hard, going above and beyond to achieve extraordinary results.

[6] Obsessively data-driven: We base our decisions on solid data and measurable outcomes.

[7] Radical candor: We communicate openly and honestly, providing direct feedback to help each other grow.

About the interview

We’re a small team who works hard to create outsized impact. our interview process is grounded in reality:

We expect whoever we hire into this role to have a high degree of agency and maniacal urgency.

Our hiring process is grounded in reality — its really hard to get a sense of how well we'd work together from a simple interview question or take home test.

Here is our process:

[1] 30 mins, intro call to understand goals, evaluate mutual fit, and set up next steps.

[2] 4 hrs, technical assessment and interview loop. Can solve p2p live, or offline, you choose.

We understand everyone is different, and solving a real world problem in a similar environment and pace as you would normally in the role will be the best way of giving you the best chance to succeed.

[3] 4 hrs, irl on-site or remote interview where we’ll work on a core problem together.

From there, you’ll get an offer or decision in <24 hrs.

We want to set expectations – we work hard, work fast, and do a lot with very little. You'd be joining an outlier team at the ground floor, and a culture of curious obsession is what we care about most.