About Tonk --- Tonk is a venture-backed, London-based startup. This is a chance to join us on the ground floor as we race towards product-market fit. The product: a next-generation backend that helps people use AI to build & share applets that integrate with their data and embed into their daily life. The progress: strong early traction with developers & partners; we have the capital, talent and relationships to propel us at speed. Our CTO is a world-class applied cryptographer & distributed systems engineer who’s uniquely able to deliver on our vision. The vision: the product is our latest step in building a new and better internet that’s more open and less platform-centric, where AI is helpful rather than spooky, and where more people have more creative power to shape software to their idiosyncratic, organic contexts. The team: multidisciplinary - we’ve started & exited successful startups, worked in the heart of Silicon Valley, graduated from world-class universities - but we’re creative, with a deep background in dance, theatre and art. We’re backed by top-tier investors. Read more on our website.
The role --- You’ll design, build, and launch core components of the Tonk toolchain:
- Work primarily in Typescript & Rust (but you may need to learn new languages as we go)
- Architect new features and implement them end-to-end
- Build simple & beautiful frontends
- Oversee launches
- Improve performance & reliability
- Gather feedback and prioritise improvements
But as in any startup, your work won’t just be writing code - you’ll be:
- Ideating in the weeds, working closely with users & founders
- Becoming expert in new domains at speed
- Driving outcomes through the creative chaos of an early stage project
- Travelling the world and growing your network
What we’re looking for ---
Technical requirements
- Strong foundations in computer science — through a degree, rigorous self-study, or equivalent experience.
- Evidence of working across the stack, from frontend to backend to infrastructure.
- Proficient in Typescript and React.
Traits You’ll have an unusual level of drive, for example:
- You ship full-stack apps on weekends just because you thought of them in the shower.
- You run a newly compiled linux partition on your computer every other week.
- Your issue on a major open-source repository turned into a month long project.
- You lead and/or participate in a local technology meetup of students and hackers.
- You are competitive ballroom dancer and know every type of card shuffle by heart.
- You hacked into your printer so you could play DOOM on the display.
You’ll be an “always-on” learner:
- You’ll be constantly acquiring or growing your skills and knowledge.
- You’ll be constantly reflecting on, and improving your learning process.
