Design Engineer

Don’t apply unless you’re interested in disrupting a $480B industry with a bunch of 20 yr olds.

- Liam, Co-Founder @ Yelo ​

This role is not about shipping and moving on. Every feature is an experiment. You'll form a hypothesis, build it, look at the data, and iterate fast. A/B testing is not optional here, it's the job.

At the core of all of it is virality. You need a genuine understanding of how consumer products spread and how to design for it. Every feature, every nudge, every interaction should have an answer to the question: why would someone share this?

A major risk I see among many hyped Gen Z consumer founders is the lack of a truly competent engineering team. One that can build, ship, and iterate at the pace their audience demands.

Strong Gen Z distribution is defensible only when paired with product velocity.

If we want to lead the disruption of Gen Z mobility, we need to be built by our generation. By the most elite young engineers.

Mobility has seen little Gen Z innovation. We were the youngest founders on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list by four years. Now is the time.

I no longer believe teams can move fast enough with a product designer building wireframes and an engineer copying them.

We live in a time where designers can be engineers. It is easier to code than ever before.

This is the Design Engineer.

You don't need to be the best engineer. You need to be both. Two non-negotiables:

Liam Redmond (product) → https://www.linkedin.com/in/liam-redmond/

Carter Johnson (founding eng) → https://www.linkedin.com/in/cjxs/

CD Mattison (product advisor) → https://www.linkedin.com/in/cdmattison/

minimum 15hrs/week

$20-35/hr with track for raises + bonuses

During school year → Remote

Possible summer IRL trips → SF / NYC

The first two weeks will be a trial built around one problem: social nudges.

Yelo sits on real-time data. Who's riding, where they're going, and when demand spikes. Your job is to turn that into product moments that make people feel like they're missing out if they're not in a Yelo.

Think: a notification that tells you three of your friends just called rides to the same part of town. Or a feed that shows ride activity spiking near you in real time. Or a nudge that gets someone off the fence and into a car because they can see the move is already happening without them.

Yelo grows through connection and FOMO. You might build referral systems and friend-of-friend loops, experiment with gamified invites and viral challenges, and measure growth through user-driven signup metrics.

Yelo is a social map of where people are going and why. You might build live heatmaps, trending feeds, and destination streaks, integrate deals, rewards, and local events, and optimize real-time performance in React Native.

Our core engine has to feel fast and sharp. You might improve matching algorithms and routing logic, refine the UI for ride requests, tracking, and drop-offs, and run experiments on batching, prediction, and efficiency.