Location: San Diego, CA

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: Yes, but not before November. Happy to go hybrid or onsite after that.

Technologies: TypeScript, Vercel AI SDK, Workflow SDK, MCP servers, Next.js, React, Node/Bun/Deno, NestJS, Postgres (Drizzle/Prisma/TypeORM), Redis, BullMQ, OpenTelemetry, Swift/SwiftUI, some Rust and Python.

Résumé/CV: https://jonwillis.dev/?utm_source=hn | https://github.com/jondwillis

Email: [email protected]

I'm an AI product engineer and sometimes-founder w/ 15+ years of experience across full stack web, native, mostly startups. I have been building agent systems and I have been at it long enough to know where they break, and I am a lifelong continual learner and striver.

Currently co-founder and CTO at Valara, bootstrapped and pre-revenue, where I built an AI-native orchestrated workflow product that reviews commercial and residential real estate appraisals for lenders. I turn my co-founder's and our design partners' experiences into product features.

Before that: a little more than two years at Uni Industries building AI, agent, and data plugins across two products, including an agent harness w/ structured tool use, skill systems, and eval pipelines.

In 2023 I shipped waggledance.ai, an open-source multi-agent system with DAG-based planning and parallel execution, before things like LangGraph or reasoning models existed. Earlier I was senior iOS at Curtsy (crash-free sessions from 99% to 99.9% at hundreds of thousands of MAU) and the first mobile engineer at Pluto TV, pre-seed through Series B, with the mobile/OTT team that I help lead there driving a lot of the early traction and growth, which eventually led to an exit in 2019.

---

I'm looking for a former-founder, senior, or staff IC role building AI products people actually use, or will use soon. Strongest on TypeScript, frontend, UX, agent architecture, and SDLC/ADLC.