ABOUT NOTO
Noto is the AI-native operating system for after-school businesses: tutoring centers, music schools, sports academies, dance studios. There are about 180,000 of them in the U.S., and millions of kids pass through them every week.
They're run by people who are good at teaching and who now spend their evenings on scheduling, payroll, and parent emails, most of it in software that was old in 2011, and some of it in spreadsheet and sticky notes.
We replace the whole stack with a modern platform encompassing scheduling, billing, payroll, marketing, CRM, communications, classroom management, student and parent portals. We are the whole back office in one place, with AI agents that automate the manual work instead of just tracking it.
A school that isn't spending 20 hours a week on admin can teach more kids, hire another teacher, and grow their business. Come help us build it the best operating system for these small business owners!
[app.ashbyhq.com]
(Team offsite in Fall 2026)
TEAM
AJ Ding (CEO) — second-time founder, previously built an AI recruiting company. ML engineer and data scientist at Quora, Lyft, and Meta. Studied statistics at Yale. Grew up in a family of small business owners.
Steve Wang (CTO) — former Head of Engineering at Nitra, an a16z-backed vertical SaaS company for doctors. Data science and engineering at Lyft before that. Studied math at Harvard.
We've raised $4M from Base10 Partners and South Park Commons. We are team of about 20 in NYC - smart, collaborative, ambitious, and genuinely nice to work with.
LOCATION
- 4 days in-office (Herald Square), 1 day remote.
- 1 week per quarter work from anywhere
- Occasional travel for team off sites and customer visits
THE ROLE
We’re hiring a Senior Product Engineer to:
- Ship large features end to end, from the design to the migration to the support ticket three weeks later.
- Build agentic systems that automate the back office.
- Make architecture calls that we'll still be living with in 2 years.
- Work directly with QA, design, Customer Success, and GTM to set the roadmap.
- Shape the engineering culture.
IDEAL CANDIDATE
- 4+ years building software, comfortable across the stack (React, Next.js, Node, Postgres).
- Product taste. You have opinions about UI and you can say why.
- Creativity and comfort with ambiguity. A lot of what you'll work on will start from unstructured customer call notes. You can engage with a customer, understand their pain points, and translate that into a product
- Interest in helping education businesses thrive.
CULTURE
You'd be a founding engineer, so you will set parts of it. What's true so far:
- Serve the customer. Our users run small businesses. We sit in their schools, go to their industry conferences, and take support calls ourselves. We get ideas by listening to the customer’s problems.
- Low ego. Flat decision-making. Nobody wins an argument by seniority, including the founders. Good ideas come from whoever's closest to the problem.
- Ownership. You will own a huge scope of the product that is mission critical to our customers. It's intense, but also rewarding. Your customers will send you thank-you gifts and sing your praises when you ship a useful feature, and cry for help o a Saturday if something’s off.
- Work ethic. Team members work 50-60 hour weeks. Some late nights and occasional weekends will be expected. The role is about growth and impact. If you want to build something meaningful and grow fast, let’s talk.
- Growth Mindset: We attend industry conferences to connect with our users, learn, network, and push the boundaries of our craft
COMPENSATION
- Competitive salary and equity that's worth caring about
- 100% company-paid benefits
- Lunch in the office, stipend for work setup
- Company retreats
INTERVIEW PROCESS
1. 30 min Meet and Greet
2. 45 min System Design
3. 45 min Coding Interview
4. Onsite (in NYC) to experience a day in the life
WHY WORK WITH US
Our average customer uses Noto more than six hours a day. One of them wrote to us: "Y'all are incredible and have made such a difference in my life in ways both professional and personal. I'm grateful and indebted."
If you're a design-minded product engineer excited to work at a small, fast-paced startup and own meaningful parts of a product that educators and families love, we'd love to meet you.
Requirements
Must-haves
AJ Ding (CEO) — second-time founder, previously built an AI recruiting company. ML engineer and data scientist at Quora, Lyft, and Meta. Studied statistics at Yale. Grew up in a family of small business owners.
Steve Wang (CTO) — former Head of Engineering at Nitra, an a16z-backed vertical SaaS company for doctors. Data science and engineering at Lyft before that. Studied math at Harvard.
We've raised $4M from Base10 Partners and South Park Commons. We are team of about 20 in NYC - smart, collaborative, ambitious, and genuinely nice to work with.
4 days in-office (Herald Square), 1 day remote.
1 week per quarter work from anywhere
Occasional travel for team off sites and customer visits
Ship large features end to end, from the design to the migration to the support ticket three weeks later.
Build agentic systems that automate the back office.
Make architecture calls that we'll still be living with in 2 years.
Work directly with QA, design, Customer Success, and GTM to set the roadmap.
Shape the engineering culture.
4+ years building software, comfortable across the stack (React, Next.js, Node, Postgres).
Product taste. You have opinions about UI and you can say why.
Creativity and comfort with ambiguity. A lot of what you'll work on will start from unstructured customer call notes. You can engage with a customer, understand their pain points, and translate that into a product
Interest in helping education businesses thrive.
You'd be a founding engineer, so you will set parts of it. What's true so far:
Serve the customer. Our users run small businesses. We sit in their schools, go to their industry conferences, and take support calls ourselves. We get ideas by listening to the customer’s problems.
Low ego. Flat decision-making. Nobody wins an argument by seniority, including the founders. Good ideas come from whoever's closest to the problem.
Work ethic. Team members work 50-60 hour weeks. Some late nights and occasional weekends will be expected. The role is about growth and impact. If you want to build something meaningful and grow fast, let’s talk.
Growth Mindset: We attend industry conferences to connect with our users, learn, network, and push the boundaries of our craft
Nice-to-haves
None flagged.
Application prep
Use the role’s language and application details while tailoring your materials.