While the world watches athletes compete for gold, we're watching startups compete for the best engineering talent.

This edition features a major ML org buildout at the company behind the most-referenced AI leaderboard in the industry, plus FDE roles across 8 startups and Senior Product Engineer positions at 4 high-growth teams.

Time to go for gold.

Arena Drops the "LM" — The team behind the most-referenced AI leaderboard just rebranded from LMArena to Arena. Now that the platform has become the arena for AI model evaluation, they’re saying “Later Man” to LM. Fresh off a $150M Series A, they also just released Max, a model router trained on 5M+ community votes. Read more →

Reducto Hits AWS Marketplace — Reducto, the AI-powered document intelligence platform, is now available on AWS Marketplace. Enterprise teams can apply existing AWS committed spend toward Reducto's document parsing APIs—meaning faster procurement and less vendor overhead. If you're still relying on legacy OCR for complex docs, this is worth a look. Read more →

FDEs might be the most underrated role in startups right now. You're basically the person who translates between "what the product does" and "what the customer actually needs"—and if you're good at it, you become indispensable fast. Eight teams hiring:

📍 Remote | 💵 $180K–$215K | 🚀 Seed, $12M

This Startup builds AI for healthcare with a customer-facing twist—expect travel once a month and hands-on LLM work. Backed by Matrix and Susa Ventures.

Roles: FDE, Sr. Backend, Sr. Full-Stack

📍 San Mateo / Remote | 💵 $200K–$300K | 🚀 Seed, $23M

This Startup is building Engineering AGI for physical systems—an AI agent that automates the cognitive work human engineers do when designing everything from data centers to aircraft. Founded by former Airbus CTO and DARPA executive. Backed by Radical Ventures, Lerer Hippeau, Schematic Ventures, and Village Global.

Roles: AI/ML, Sr. Backend, FDE, Research Engineer

📍 NYC & Remote | 💵 $180K–$220K | 🚀 Series B, $60M+

This Startup helps banks and credit unions manage deposits at scale. NYC-only for FDE roles. Backed by a16z, Canapi Ventures, and Curql.

Roles: Sr. Backend, Sr. Full-Stack, Staff SWE, FDE

📍 NYC, SF, South Bay | 💵 $150K–$300K | 🚀 Seed, $7.2M

This Startup deploys AI solutions for enterprise customers. FDE requires 5+ YoE with SWE + technical consulting background. Backed by Foundation Capital.

Roles: FDE, Sr. Backend, AI/ML, Platform Engineer

📍 SF & NY | 💵 $200K–$300K | 🚀 Seed, $12M

This Startup is building next-gen AI development tools. High bar, SF = remote option. Backed by Felicis and Khosla Ventures.

Roles: Sr. Full-Stack, FDE, Sr. Product Engineer

📍 NYC | 💵 $200K–$300K | 🚀 Series A, $24.3M

This Startup helps companies slash their cloud bills with AI-powered optimization. Backed by Nat Friedman, Daniel Gross, Naval Ravikant, Aaron Levie, and Sound Ventures.

Roles: Platform Engineer, Sr. Full-Stack, FDE, Full-Stack

📍 SF | 💵 $200K–$300K | 🚀 Series B, $70M

This Startup builds AI coding agents that ship production code. NYC available for FDE. Backed by Sequoia, NEA, Lux Capital, and NVIDIA.

Roles: Sr. Full-Stack, Sr. Backend, FDE, Infra

📍 SF | 💵 $180K–$300K | 🚀 Series A, $25M

This Startup automates complex workflows with AI. TypeScript stack, early career to 6 YoE welcome. Backed by CRV, Foundation Capital, and South Park Commons.

Roles: Full-Stack, Sr. Full-Stack, FDE, Staff SWE

Product engineers are the biathletes of the engineering world—they ski fast AND hit the target. It's an absurdly hard combo, which is why these four teams are paying accordingly.

📍 SF & NYC | 💵 $200K–$315K | 🚀 Series A, $40M

This Startup is building the AI-native platform for generative media, powered by Character-3—the first omnimodal model in production. They've been behind viral content across X, Reddit, and Instagram. Backed by a16z, Index, Abstract, and Amazon Alexa Fund.

Roles: Sr. Product Engineer, AI/ML, Sr. Backend

📍 NYC | 💵 $220K–$260K | 🚀 Series A, $64M

This Startup is building AI-powered wealth management tools for the next generation. Backed by General Catalyst, Index, and Venrock.

Roles: Sr. Product Engineer, Staff AI/ML

📍 NYC | 💵 $180K–$220K | 🚀 Series A, $22M

This Startup is bringing joy back to healthcare with AI-powered tools. Backed by CRV, XYZ, and Elliot Horowitz (MongoDB founder).

Roles: Data Engineer, Product Engineer

📍 SF | 💵 $225K–$350K | 🚀 Series A, $25M

This Startup is building enterprise security tools powered by AI. Backed by Thrive Capital, DST Global Partners, and SV Angel.

Roles: Product Engineer, AI/ML, Sr. Backend, Security Engineer

You're either: 🔥 Actively looking and need the right intros 🤔 Passively curious but open to the perfect opportunity or 👀 Just scouting the market (smart move)

All three are valid. All three are worth a 15-minute conversation.

Here's what happens next:

1️⃣ Book a slot below (takes 30 seconds)
2️⃣ We talk about where you want to be in 12-24 months
3️⃣ We intro you to 2-3 companies that actually fit
4️⃣ You interview on your timeline (or not at all)

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If you know a sharp engineer (0-10 YOE) who should see these opportunities, just reply with their email. If they get placed, you get paid.

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