About Dust

Work is being rewritten, and the people holding the pen are the ones who actually run it.

We call them AI operators: the employees inside companies who build, deploy, and run AI agents for their teams, without waiting for someone to hand them a tool. Dust is the platform they choose to rewire how their company works.

With 70%+ weekly active users, people stick with Dust as much as they do with Slack and Notion. We don't get piloted and shelved. We land once, and spread. We're at an exciting stage of our journey, and growing fast.

We're serving great customers like Datadog, 1Password, Cursor, Clay, and Persona, and aim to x5 our growth by the end of 2026.

Dust is backed by Sequoia with a determined team of optimists (coming from Stripe, OpenAI, and Stanford) who like to focus on users, ship fast, and don't take themselves too seriously while doing so. The Generalist named us among the Future 50.

TL;DR

We are seeking a talented Software Engineer to join our team. You will be responsible for framing and building high-value features and pieces of infrastructure in this role.

As a Software Engineer, you’ll engage with technologies like Typescript, React.js, Node.js, Rust, shadcn, Kubernetes, Helm, Terraform, Elasticsearch, QDrant, PostgreSQL.

Dust on Dust: as engineers, we have the incredible chance to work on a product we use every day.

Our culture

• Product-First: Unlike others focused on building foundation models, we're laser-focused on creating delightful product experiences with existing LLMs.

• Small, High-Impact Team: Join a team of alumni from Stripe, Front, OpenAI, and other top tech companies. We're intentionally keeping our team small and mighty – every engineer has massive scope and impact.

• Transparency & Collaboration: Our repository is open source, and we leverage serendipity between team members. We believe the best ideas emerge when the team shares information and insights openly.

• Proactive Problem-Solving: If you see something broken, fix it—without waiting for permission. We don't wait for solutions - we create them.

• Ship to Learn: We move fast and learn from real user feedback.

• Intellectual Humility: We value strong convictions balanced with open-mindedness. Team members confidently advocate for their ideas while remaining receptive to new perspectives and evidence that might change their minds. If new data emerges, we adapt quickly.

What you’ll do

• Own critical features end-to-end: Design and implement core product experiences that directly impact how users interact with AI.

• Scope and lead technical projects to completion with an eye on the full stack and a mind for opinionated prioritization.

• Collaborate closely with users: Work directly with customers to understand their needs and rapidly iterate on solutions.

• Build for scale: Design and implement systems that gracefully handle increasing complexity while maintaining simplicity for users.

Tech Stack Highlights

• Dust for Dust: We use Dust for Coding, debugging, knowledge search (runbooks, codebase), incident management, and task automation (i.e., creating issues).

• Programming languages: TypeScript, Rust (not a requirement; we’re open to people who are experts in other programming languages).

• Other relevant tools and technologies:

  • Front end: React, shadcn

  • Backend: NextJS, Kubernetes, Terraform/Helm

  • Database: PostgreSQL, QDrant, Elasticsearch

  • DevOps: Datadog monitoring, Github actions-based CI/CD

Benefits & Compensation

• Competitive compensation: €30K - €150K* base salary

• We offer substantial support for relocation, including a stipend up to €10k, finding an apartment in Paris, and supporting you with all residence and work permit-related procedures.

• Significant equity package in a Sequoia-backed startup

• Health insurance for you and your dependents

• New MacBook Pro or Linux machine, monitor, keyboard, etc.

• Beautiful office in the heart of Paris

• Opportunity to travel to the US multiple times a year

• Regular team events and offsites

Dust Engineering Salary Grid

Regarding compensation culture, we're going to lean towards Netflix's early philosophy: we are happy to review levels and compensation as early and as often as it makes sense to do so, not when the calendar says so.

Regarding expectations associated with levels, we're including a very broad definition of each level below. When attributing a level at hiring, the expectation is for you to perform comfortably at this level within your first year. We'll set up catch-up times throughout that first year to keep track of your progress and communicate clearly whether you're matching these expectations.

- Level I: Limited prior experience, learning the ropes
- Level II: Level I + Autonomy
- Level III: Level II + Rigorous dependability
- Level IV: Level III + Excellence
- Level V: Level IV + Leadership
- Level VI: Level V + Impact on company trajectory

*We can go higher for outstanding profiles.

Location

We're prioritizing building our team with an in-person culture at our offices in Paris and San Francisco, because we value the magic that happens when talented people work closely together.

Why Dust

The models are powerful enough. What's missing is the product layer where AI meets how companies actually work. That's what we're building: the infrastructure that lets any team turn scattered knowledge and tools into coordinated execution with agents they build, own, and run themselves.

We use Dust ourselves every day. We get to shape how humans and agents collaborate while solving our own problems with the product we ship. That loop is rare, and it's why we move fast.

If you're excited about defining a new category and want to join a determined team of optimists who focus on users, ship fast, and don't take themselves too seriously, we'd love to talk.

Even if you don't check every box in our requirements, we encourage you to apply. We value diverse perspectives and backgrounds, and we're more interested in your potential and passion than a perfect match to our checklist.

Learn how we think and work.

• Our product constitution, a story about our mission

• Agents at work - Latent Space, podcast with our cofounder, Stanislas Polu, 2024

• LLMs reasoning and agentic capabilities over time - dotAI, podcast with our cofounder, Stanislas Polu, 2024