https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/clearspace/jobs/5LtM86I-founding-network-engineer-at-clearspace

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[c529e63033]

Clearspace

Eliminate compulsive phone usage

Founding Network Engineer at Clearspace

$170K - $230K*0.50% - 1.00%*San Francisco, CA, US
Job type
Full-time
Role
Engineering, Backend
Experience
1+ years
Visa
US citizen/visa only
Skills
Go, TypeScript, Unix
Connect directly with founders of the best YC-funded startups.
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Oliver Hill
Oliver Hill
Founder
Oliver Hill
Oliver Hill
Founder

About the role

About Clearspace

Clearspace is building the intentionality layer of the internet. Our
mission is to build technology as effective at protecting human
attention as social media is at exploiting it (infinite scrolling,
short-form feeds, manipulative notifications, etc). Our category
defining mobile app has been featured on Huberman Lab, New York Times
Wirecutter, NPR Marketplace, Forbes, TBPN.

People that want a better relationship with their devices have
nowhere to turn except for willpower. We are building a system allows
users to control what their devices see by processing and filtering
network traffic against natural language rules.

About The Role

We're looking for a networking-obsessed engineer to own the VPN +
first-hop policy proxy that powers our AI agent. You don't need to be
an IKEv2 expert, we care more about deep networking intuition,
debugging skill, and the desire to go all the way down the stack
until the truth reveals itself.

You might be a great fit if you've built:

  * High-throughput proxies or gateways
  * Traffic/security systems
  * Realtime consumer networking
  * Anything that required living in packet captures and shipping
    reliable fixes

What You'll Build

  * A global VPN and policy-aware proxy that can apply human-language
    rules to real traffic in real time.
  * Region-aware routing and connection strategies that keep users
    fast and stable as they move.
  * The foundations for safe, privacy-respecting traffic
    classification at consumer scale.

Qualifications

  * 3+ years building and operating high-throughput networking or
    edge systems (proxying, gateways, L4/L7 traffic, security, CDNs,
    realtime infra, etc.).
  * Demonstrated ability to debug across the network stack using
    packet captures and system-level tooling.
  * Strong systems engineering fundamentals (performance,
    reliability, observability, incident response).
  * Comfortable reading specs/RFCs and diving into unfamiliar
    protocols quickly.
  * Proficiency in Go (TypeScript a plus).
  * Excited by Clearspace's mission and willing to work onsite in San
    Francisco.

Nice to Have

  * Experience with VPNs or secure tunneling (IPsec/IKEv2, WireGuard,
    StrongSwan, OpenVPN).
  * Experience building or extending proxy servers or L7 gateways.
  * Background in traffic analysis, classification, or DPI.
  * Familiarity with mobile networking constraints (roaming, captive
    portals, battery, NAT).
  * Experience with eBPF or kernel-adjacent performance tooling.

Compensation

  * Key role in a consumer AI startup shaping the future of the
    internet
  * Autonomy, speed, and full visibility into product and company
    building

About Clearspace

At Clearspace we help people reduce compulsive phone usage.

We exist to protect people's attention from the exploits of modern
technology platforms and make space for the things that matter to
them most.

We believe the technology to protect someones attention should be
just as sophisticated and effective as the tech that is exploiting it
and are building a world-class engineering team to arm the world with
a comprehensive attention protection stack.

Clearspace
Clearspace
Founded:2022
Batch:W23
Team Size:5
Status:
Active
Location:San Francisco
  
 
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Founders
Royce Branning
Royce Branning
Twitter account 
 
Founder
Royce Branning
Royce Branning
Twitter account 
 
Founder
Oliver Hill
Oliver Hill
Twitter account 
 
Founder
Oliver Hill
Oliver Hill
Twitter account 
 
Founder

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