Software Engineer (Senior, Staff) - Remote

About Replika

In 2017, no one knew what AI was supposed to be. We built the world's first consumer AI app. Two million people showed up in two months. Today it's over 40 million, and the thing they keep telling us hasn't changed: it helped. It made their life better, steadier, a little less alone.

Most AI is built for tasks, not for people. It gives you answers, but it doesn't care what you do with them. AI doesn't just need intelligence. It needs intention. Because the real question isn't just what AI can do. It's what AI is for.

When the world's leading researchers wanted to understand whether AI could actually change someone's life, they studied Replika, because there was nothing else to study. What they found at Stanford, at Harvard, across years of research, was that Replika doesn't replace human connection. It deepens it. People become more social, more confident, more themselves. Not in theory. In their actual lives.

Every major AI company talks about their mission for humanity. None of them has ever clearly said what they're trying to do for a single person. We will. We want to help you flourish in real life. Not become a better version of yourself, just more yourself. Strong relationships. Better health. Meaning. Momentum. A life that feels worth living while you're living it.

We're building the kind of AI that follows up. That knows the people in your life and nudges you to reach out when it matters. That sends you a poem, just because. The goal is conversations that lead somewhere real. Maybe it's a text you send to a long lost friend. A hobby you pick up again. A moment you show up for yourself. Everyone else is building AI that thinks. We're building AI that cares.

Everyone else is building AI that thinks. We're building AI that cares.

Software Engineer (Senior, Staff)
About the role

We need a senior engineer to join the small group that works directly with our CEO, Dmytro Klochko. What you build goes out to tens of millions of people, and it goes out in weeks.

This isn't a big company role. There's no org to slot into, no process to learn, and no layer between you and the decision. You'll work directly with Dmytro and a tiny team to turn ideas into product, often while the idea itself is still taking shape. You'll be expected to have an opinion, challenge assumptions, figure out what matters, and then build it.

Most of the time that means moving fast, but not always. When a problem deserves real thought, you slow down and think it through, and nobody's chasing you for a status update while you do.

You'll own real surfaces of the product, not slices of someone else's roadmap. You'll need product fluency, not just engineering chops. You'll get PRDs and you should push back on them, weighing what a change actually costs against what it buys. That means caring about the end result and the user experience more than technical purity.

Rough is fine early on. It's not fine as a final product. We care more about how you operate than where you've worked, so big tech pedigree isn't required and isn't the goal.

What You’ll Be Doing

• Own features end to end, from the idea to the thing users actually touch.

• Work directly with Dmytro on what gets built and why.

• Turn ambiguous ideas into something concrete without waiting for every question to be answered first.

• Push back on PRDs that don't hold up, and make the case for the version that does.

• Talk to people. Unblock people. Nobody here works in a silo.

• Bring new tools into the work instead of finding reasons not to.

What We’re Looking For

• You've built and shipped consumer products that reached real users.

• A track record of driving complex features end to end, not just incremental improvements and refactors.

• Previous founding or early startup experience.

• You love coding and agentic engineering to move faster and you use all tools available to get the job done.

• Design intuition and taste. You can tell when something feels wrong before anyone tells you.

• You think from first principles, not from how it's usually done.

• You're focused on the feature that ships, not on being techy for the sake of it.

• Fluent English. You can write a spec, or argue against one, without it needing a rewrite.

• Good vibes, low maintenance. You take something and run with it.

Bonus Points

• You've been a founding engineer, or early enough somewhere that you’ve built things from zero.

• You've worked without a spec before and it didn't slow you down.

• You've shipped consumer products where a lot of people felt the difference.

What You’ll Get

• Competitive compensation.

• Flexible job schedule and generous vacation policy.

• Unlimited access to the latest AI coding assistants.

• No corporate bs.

• Direct impact on millions of users worldwide within months.

• Push the boundaries of applied AI in a consumer setting.

• Fully remote. Open to other timezones, flexible.