careers at playbit

founding engineer,
data syncing & storage

As the founding engineer responsible for data synchronization and storage, you are leading our efforts to build a world-class, local-first, real time-sync operating system. You will be working closely with the team to develop a system capable of synchronizing workspaces across multiple devices operated by different people. Some data will need to be just local to a device, some shared with other people and some data only accessible to a certain user on their devices.

We are building something that must be incredibly reliable with minimal lag, which means that data access is primarily performed locally, ideally without involving servers at all. You are familiar with technologies & concepts like CRDT and Raft but also have experience working with centralized coordination via public servers.

You get stuff done and are comfortable making decisions when the path forward is unclear. Even though we will be working very closely together as a team, there will often not be a clear plan — you will be figuring that out together with the team. Sometimes you will need to figure it out by yourself and clearly communicate your plan to others.

Playbit is primarily a native Linux kernel-based environment, so you need to be comfortable with native-program development & debugging. Large parts of Playbit is also running on the web platform; workspaces & apps are built using WebAssembly for the web, in addition to native ELF. All of Playbit's programming interfaces are C ABIs.

Communication is paramount. You must be willing to spend whatever time is needed to bring your coworkers up to speed—to help others understand—where you are going. Sometimes you will spend most of a day talking with your coworkers, not programming.

This job is remote. We are a fully remote team, physically based in the San Francisco Bay Area, California. You have to be able to have meetings during 09:00–11:00 Pacific Time (GMT-7.)

Interested? Send an email to careers AT playb.it and tell us a little bit about yourself and why you'd be excited to join Playbit.

Come be part of a small, focused team who deeply care for each other and our craft. Playbit is building a new operating system for software creatives. We believe that the future does not limit your logical computer to your physical hardware.

With Playbit, your computers are always available and can even be shared with others. You can have as many computers as you like, without the need for dedicated hardware. This is accomplished by workspaces which are like virtual machines, synchronized across all devices for all participants using local-first technology. Your workspaces can even be accessed on the web, powered by WASM & WebGPU.

At Playbit we believe that great work comes from trust and passion, not just academic excellence. We believe in being effective and efficient; working hard but not working more than necessary. Life is about more than work and we respect that in each other. We believe that great things can be built without "doing the grind." We believe that caring for each other makes a fantastic team which ultimately leads to great products.

We are just getting started. Adventure awaits.

the playbit vision

A better OS for software professionals & hobbyists. For people pushing the status quo of computing. What Mac OS X was, but catering to today’s needs.

At the core of Playbit is the “Workspace”, a space for a topic or project. Workspaces can be shared with other people and are fully stateful. It is like having many computers inside your one computer.

Workspaces are fully stateful and can be suspended and resumed at any time without any data loss — apps, open windows, scroll positions, text selection, files etc are all persisted with a workspace.

You can access your workspaces on any computer.

A shared workspace can be a simpler substitute for version control like git: with integrated snapshotting at the filesystem level you can quickly explore or roll back older versions of your workspace. You can even duplicate—or “fork” if you will—a workspace in case you want to try something without affecting the current workspace. This can also be used for template workspaces. Beyond workspaces, this system provides services fundamental & relevant to today’s software, like data syncing APIs, payments APIs, etc.