Founding Engineer
Holly · New York, NY
About Holly
Holly is on a mission to bring millions of Americans into public service through software that treats them with hospitality and care
Hiring is a common and addressable pain point across 17,000 local governments in the US, causing 1.1 million vacant government jobs. The average time to hire in the public sector is 135 days, compared to 30 in the private sector, contributing to loss of the best candidates, $85B in annual state and local overtime spending, and declining public service delivery nationwide.
Hiring takes longer because the HR directors and analysts use outdated software - poor outbound recruiting tools and opaque process management and internal visibility are key blockers to progress. In addition, poor data access means that cities struggle with keeping their pay and positions aligned with the market, relying instead on “class & compensation” consultants who provide static and out-of-date salary benchmarking reports that regularly cost $100k or more for midsize cities. The same consultants produce the same reports over and over, while cities fill in the cracks with time-intensive Excel-based intergovernmental surveys.
Holly provides local governments with a better option by building the first AI-native HRIS driving performance and collaboration for governments, revolutionizing hiring in the public sector. At full scale, our product will encompass the employee lifecycle, from recruitment, to onboarding, to performance management, to benefits management, to offboarding. To start, we’re building out our first product, which helps governments design better jobs using cross-agency benchmarking and automated description creation.
We recently raised a preseed and have substantial traction, happy to share more when we speak!
Our team brings experience across government, tech startups, and innovation
- Brendan Hellweg managed performance and data science on behalf of the mayor of Baltimore and grew a public health program from 0 to 275 people in under a year during the pandemic that raised $12M from Rockefeller and the federal government. Brendan saw how better collaboration and consistent process management could cut the time to hire for critical roles across field and management staff, and he leverages his networks across government to build inroads with clients and identify their key pain points in the hiring process.
- Cherie Chung was the 8th hire at Propel, where she led initiatives and built systems across business and product that drove 10x revenue growth, the scaling of the product to 5 million users, and the implementation of a $200M cash transfer program during the pandemic. She brings deep expertise in scaling mission-focused tech ventures by building foundational tools and systems for operational excellence and working cross-functionally with engineers, and designers, and customer success staff to drive key outcomes.
Our founding team met as part of Harvard’s MBA / MPP program. Holly was incubated at the Harvard Innovation Labs and is backed by angels that are leaders across the future of work and govtech.
The Role
You would be the founding engineer in a full-time team of 3, working closely alongside our pilot customers to shape and refine the MVP to a product that’s ready for the market.
You will:
- Lead the development of our platform, making strategic decisions about technology stack, architecture, and scalability
- Design and implement integrations with various systems (e.g., APIs, web portals, email systems) to support automated data processing
- Collaborate with the founding team to shape the product roadmap, translating business requirements and customer needs into technical solutions
- Manage and guide external partners (such as contractors) and potentially new engineering hires to meet technical standards and deadlines
- Ensure a high-quality, responsive, and secure application by implementing best practices in software design, testing, and data protection
- Contribute to our company culture as a founding team member, participating in strategic decisions beyond engineering
If all goes well, we anticipate significant opportunity for this role to grow into a Head of Engineering or CTO long-term for the company, managing a small team within the first two years in the role. The compensation for this role ranges from $140,000 to $170,000 base salary plus equity and benefits.
Skills & qualifications
We’d love to hear from if you…
- Have 4+ years of professional experience in full-stack product development
- Share our mission and desire to improve the quality of software in the public sector
- Are curious, empathetic, collaborative, and care deeply about user experience
- Prioritize moving fast, shipping often, and are comfortable operating under ambiguity in an evolving startup environment
- Collaborate well and communicate clearly with both technical and non-technical team members, partners, and stakeholders, placing customer and platform outcomes first
Our commitment to inclusion and belonging
Holly is committed to building a diverse company and working with the broadest talent pool possible. We encourage applications from all races, religions, national origins, genders, sexual orientations, gender identities, gender expressions, and ages, as well as veterans and individuals with disabilities. We believe diverse ideas foster innovation and engagement, and allow us to attract creatively-led people, and to develop the best products, services and solutions. All qualified individuals are encouraged to apply.
We strive to also provide a disability inclusive application and interview process. If you are a candidate with a disability and require reasonable accommodation in order to submit an application, please contact us at: [email protected]. Please include your full name, the role you’re applying for and the accommodation necessary to assist you with the recruiting process.
How to apply
Send us your resume, a link to your Github / portfolio and a short email about why you’re interested in this role to [email protected].
Interview process
We aim to make this happen in 1-2 weeks:
- Initial call (30 min) - Chat with Cherie and Brendan about Holly. Learn more about the company, share more about your background, motivations, and potential fit
- Product exercise (45-60 min) - Cherie and Brendan walk through demo of existing product and plans for new features. Ask questions and provide feedback; share about how you'd approach feature development
- Technical exercise (30 min) ****- Engage in a quick evaluation of technical abilities
- On site day in NY Given our early stage, we believe that getting face time as part of this process is crucial for all parties. You’ll learn what it’s like to work with us as we’re learning what it’s like to work with you, in a way that allows us to move fast through the hiring process. We can discuss alternatives if this doesn’t work for your situation. This will take 3-4 hours and will involve the following:
- Hacking session: Work together collaboratively on a feature that was discussed / scoped in the product / technical exercise
- Culture fit / alignment conversation: Dig deeper into your working style, expectations, preferences, mission, values, and the mutual fit
- Vision and strategy session: discuss your ideas for company / product, share our long-term thinking and plans, and answer any other questions you may have
- Reference calls We’d love to chat with a former manager and / or collaborator
- Full-time offer 🎉
We’re excited to build with you!
~ Cherie & Brendan 🌆
