🚀 Hermes Web: Call for Founding Engineer

Hermes Web is looking for a founding engineer to build the first polished, hosted personal AI agent product.

Some facts about us:

• Incubated by Open Core Ventures, the studio founded by Sid Sijbrandij (ex-CEO of GitLab)
• Building the hosted, non-technical-user version of Hermes Agent — the fastest-growing open-source agent framework after OpenClaw
• OCV underwrites infrastructure and LLM costs, so you optimize for growth and polish, not unit economics
• Fully remote, product-focused, compressed sprint cadence

If you want to own product and engineering end-to-end, ship consumer-grade polish in a space that's still raw, and help define what a mainstream AI agent product looks like, this is for you.

Project described below.

Requirements

• High agency, ship fast without hand-holding
• Strong Python skills — FastAPI or similar production web framework experience required
• Strong frontend skills (React, Next.js, TypeScript) for the chat, memory, and activity surfaces
• Experience with auth, billing, and multi-tenancy in production products
• Container orchestration experience (Kubernetes, Nomad, ECS, or equivalent)
• Experience with AI-native tools (Cursor, Claude Code, model APIs)
• Knowledge of agents, LLM gateways, rate limiting, and abuse prevention
• Comfortable working across frontend, backend, infrastructure, and AI workflows

The kind of person we want: someone who has shipped a consumer or prosumer product they're still proud of, and who responds to an aggressive timeline with "tight but doable if we cut X, Y, Z" rather than "let me spec it first."

Bonus skills:

• Experience with agent frameworks (Hermes, OpenClaw, LangGraph)
• LLM gateway or proxy work
• Stripe subscription billing at scale
• Production experience hardening agentically-generated code
• OSS contributions
• Consumer AI product experience (Cowork, Cursor, or similar)

Project: Hosted Hermes Agent Platform

1. Introduction

We are building a multi-tenant hosted platform that gives anyone their own personal Hermes agent running in the cloud in under 60 seconds. No terminal, no API keys, no configuration. The agent persists, remembers them, and gets better over time.

This project includes:

• Per-user Hermes containers with network and storage isolation
• A warm pool provisioning system for instant signup-to-first-message
• A production-hardened chat, memory, and activity interface
• An LLM gateway that meters usage, enforces caps, and prevents abuse
• Bundled Claude Sonnet access — users never see an API key or model selector
• Stripe billing infrastructure and self-serve subscription flows

2. Requirements

Platform and provisioning

• Per-tenant container orchestration via Kubernetes or Nomad
• Warm pool pattern for sub-90-second provisioning
• Idle sleep and fast wake (under 2 seconds on incoming message)
• Persistent per-tenant memory and conversation storage
• Auth via Clerk or Auth0 (email + Google OAuth, email verification required)

Frontend

• React, Next.js, TypeScript, Tailwind, shadcn
• Multi-tenant chat, memory, and activity surfaces
• Graceful handling of connection loss, agent timeouts, container restarts
• Streaming responses, conversation history, new-thread flows

LLM gateway

• Proxy every Anthropic API call from every tenant container
• Hold Anthropic API keys server-side; tenant containers never see them
• Per-tenant metering with second-by-second granularity
• Hard daily and monthly cost caps
• Circuit breakers for runaway loops
• Ops kill switch for any tenant

Billing and ops

• Stripe subscription integration at $20/mo
• Self-serve upgrade, downgrade, cancel
• Internal ops dashboard for user management and anomaly response
• Runbooks for common failure modes

3. Non-Goals

• Developer-facing platform
• Self-hosted desktop or mobile apps
• Skills marketplace or plugin ecosystem
• Workflow builder, triggers, scheduled agents
• Team accounts, SSO, enterprise features
• Multiple LLM providers or model selection
• Bring-your-own API key
• Forking Hermes — we track upstream and contribute back

4. Prior Art

• Hermes Agent — the open-source framework we build the hosted experience on top of
• OpenClaw — the largest agent framework today and reference for community patterns and growth dynamics
• LangGraph Deep Agents — architecture patterns for stateful long-running agent workflows
• Anthropic MCP — server design patterns for tool interfaces and permission-aware context
• Cowork (Anthropic) — polish bar and UX patterns for non-technical AI agent products
• Cursor agent UI — interaction model for AI agents in consumer products

Esusu: Building Credit Access for All

Your financial future shouldn't depend on your race, background, or zip code. Yet 45 million Americans remain "credit invisible," while countless others face denials, evictions, and predatory interest rates regularly. Esusu is changing that.

As a financial technology and data platform, we're revolutionizing financial health, identity services, and inclusive decision-making for individuals and businesses alike.

Our impact speaks volumes:

• $50 billion in credit activity facilitated
• 5 million+ rental units in our network
• Trusted partnerships with leading real estate companies, government entities, fintechs, banks, and employers

Through our enterprise services, embedded products, and consumer offerings, we're creating a financial system that works for everyone—right when fintech innovation matters most. Join us in building a future where financial systems are inclusive by design, access is standard, and opportunity reaches everyone. Unlock Tomorrow with Esusu.

The Challenge:

We are seeking an expert developer, technical leader, and core team member who will take end-to-end ownership of whole systems and drive major complex systems initiatives. This role is critical as we actively reshape our Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) to be AI-driven, utilizing agent-based workflows. The ideal candidate will work closely with other experienced engineers to contribute to and execute the team’s technical strategy, maintaining the long-term health of our Ruby on Rails monolith and future systems, and demonstrating the flexibility required to excel in a rapidly evolving, small team-minded environment. This role must ensure successful delivery against team and organizational goals.

What will you help deliver:

• Lead the technical execution and successful delivery of large, complex projects, providing architectural guidance and coordinating efforts among team members and relevant stakeholders.
• Be accountable for the long-term architecture, health, and quality of the team’s codebase and systems.
• Champion the adoption and execution of an AI-driven SDLC, specifically utilizing agent-based building techniques, and demonstrating a high degree of flexibility and willingness to learn.
• Lead engineering designs, soliciting feedback and building consensus across the team, while presenting and implementing best practices and patterns.
• Take full-cycle ownership of projects, including coordination, planning, risk management, security and compliance reviews, design, development, testing, rollout, and maintenance; resulting in an improvement of customer, product, and/or business outcomes.
• Make high-quality, impactful technical contributions across the full stack, encompassing light infrastructure work and a full-stack Ruby on Rails monolith.
• Drive collaboration with teammates, partners, and stakeholders to advance team and organizational goals.
• Mentor L5 engineers, lifting the skills and expertise of those around you, and cultivating learning and growth within the team.

Qualifications:

• Relevant Bachelor's degree (or equivalent practical experience) plus at least 7 years of relevant industry experience in full-stack development, with significant experience in a technical leadership capacity.
• Expertise in using AI throughout the SDLC and in product development, including the ability to design and build data products for your domain. Prior significant experience building work using agents is highly preferred. Must be flexible and possess a strong willingness to learn and excel at this way of working.
• Deep expertise in one or more technical areas, serving as an excellent source of insights and wisdom within the team.
• Superb programming, software, and data development skills, enabling independent problem-solving with minimal explanation needed.
• Exceptional communication skills, with the ability to efficiently translate between technical and non-technical audiences and provide meaningful guidance on designs and code.
• At least 6 years of experience in Ruby on Rails.
• Proficiency in designing and managing relational (SQL) databases like PostgreSQL.
• Experience with front-end languages (JavaScript, TypeScript) and frameworks (Stimulus JS, React), and proficiency with CSS frameworks like Tailwind CSS.
• Experience with hosting platforms like Heroku and cloud providers such as Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

Above and Beyond:

• FinTech/PropTech Expertise: Experience working in FinTech or PropTech sectors.
• Startup Experience: Familiarity with the dynamics of startup environments.
• Compliance Knowledge: Experience working in SOC2-certified, ISO-certified, or similar organizations.
• Verification Experience: Previous experience in fraud detection or identity verification.

Competitive Benefits That Support You

At Esusu, we invest in our people with benefits designed to help you thrive both personally and professionally:

• 💵Competitive Salary – Aligned with your experience and the market
• ✅ Remote first work environment - Where we trust you to get your work done. Core availability expected during Eastern Time (8AM–5PM EST).
• 🫱🏾 🫲🏽In person and virtual team get togethers - To connect with your fellow Esusu colleagues.

What you will do: 

We are looking for a high-functioning psychopath to help bring the next wave of hybrid web2/3 applications.

You will be joining a team of top-tier self-selected sado-masochists, who work here because they can’t really work anywhere else. We value rapid communication and direct feedback, both internal and external. Breakneck pace shipping, autonomy and ownership, and constant experimentation are table stakes. Apologies in advance.

What Sparks Your Enthusiasm

• Shipping nonsense to billions of users
• That point of a futile debugging session where you start to question your sanity and everything becomes hilarious
• Finding interesting/troubling ways to solve engineering problems
• “Huh, that’s weird”, gives you a sense of giddy panic
• A constant feeling like your spinal column has been struck by lightning

What Turns You Away

• “It works on my machine”
• “The user should be able to figure it out”
• “That isn’t my problem”
• Feeling generally calm and in control of the situation

Requirements:

• Typescript
• React
• Self-destructive tendencies
• CSS Frameworks (Tailwind, MUI, etc.)
• Medically significant but non-terminal caffeine addiction
• Experience with Git/Github in a distributed team
• Experience integrating with REST/GraphQL/GRPC APIs
• Security Minded
• Comfort in a young, chaotic, rapidly evolving small team startup environment
• Ability to pick up and learn new stacks and tools on zero notice

Nice to haves:

• Cosm.js or Web3.js experience, general experience developing with crypto focused javascript libraries.
• Experience with NPM release best practices
• Experience working with and configuring bundlers (Webpack, Vite, etc.)
• Experience with browser and mobile data storage, ie LocalStorage, SQLite
• Performance conscious development, as the majority of the global user base is on mobile phones
• Integration and unit testing experience

Day-to-Day Responsibilities:

Actual: 

• Desperate banging on keyboard
• Ripping hair out over encoding errors
• Not learning from previous mistakes about encoding errors
• Ripping hair out over encoding errors

Formal:

• Design Implementation: Work closely with the design team to bring concepts to life, using provided designs as a foundation while exercising autonomy in execution.
• Feature Development: Take ownership of features from planning to release, including scoping, task management, and prioritization.
• Documentation Analysis: Research and review available documentation to guide development, navigating and interpreting scarce or ambiguous resources.
• Testing and Debugging: Conduct thorough testing and extensive debugging to ensure high-quality deliverables, iterating through multiple cycles as needed.
• Collaboration: Engage with the protocol team to facilitate smooth integration of features, providing technical guidance and feedback.
• Continuous Improvement: Participate in the release process, ensuring stability and performance, and contribute to ongoing improvements and refinements.

Cultural:

• Take on new features or bug fixes, with full ownership
• Scoff at the lack of documentation in our field
• “Reverse engineer” protocol level … stuff… to integrate into client
• Debug, debug, debug
• Release and iterate