⚡ We're Hiring: Principal Engineer @ Hygo

Hygo reaches 250 million people every month with original video content built around the things people are passionate about. Behind it is a serious technical platform — a TypeScript monorepo spanning React/Next.js, NestJS, AI pipelines, GPU infrastructure, and 14+ production servers running a creator Studio used by people all over the world.

We're not looking for someone who leads from the whiteboard. We need a builder — someone with the architectural judgment of a CTO and the output of a senior IC who still loves writing code. You don't wait for specialists. You become the specialist for whatever the highest-priority problem is today.

🏗️ What You'll Work On

This is the broadest ownership role on the team — you'll touch every layer of the stack and set the bar for everyone around you.

Ship features across the entire stack — React/Next.js frontend, NestJS backend, PostgreSQL data layer, Temporal workflows, and GPU-backed AI pipelines — without waiting for handoffs or specialists
Make high-stakes architecture decisions in real-time: service boundaries, data modeling, caching strategy, infrastructure topology, and AI integration patterns — then implement them yourself
Own production reliability for a 14+ server deployment: diagnose and fix incidents across web servers, API servers, job workers, Temporal clusters, Redis, and PostgreSQL — you're comfortable SSHing into a box at 2 AM and figuring out why the queue is backed up
Drive AI integration from research to production: evaluate frontier models, prototype capabilities (image generation, voice synthesis, classification), build the serving infrastructure, and ship it behind production APIs with proper monitoring and fallbacks
Build and optimize data pipelines, training workflows, and inference infrastructure — you understand model serving, GPU utilization, and the tradeoffs between latency, throughput, and cost
Design and implement payment flows, subscription logic, webhook processing, and financial reconciliation — billing is one of our highest-risk systems and you won't shy away from it
Write the migration, the API endpoint, the React component, the Storybook story, the Playwright test, and the deploy script — in the same PR if needed
Establish engineering standards by example: your PRs set the bar for code quality, test coverage, and documentation
Mentor and unblock other engineers across every layer of the stack — you're the person everyone goes to when they're stuck

✅ What We're Looking For

8+ years in software engineering with a track record of building and shipping complex systems — not managing from a distance, but personally writing the code that runs in production
True full-stack mastery: production UIs (React/Next.js), production APIs (Node.js/NestJS or equivalent), managed production databases (PostgreSQL), and operated production infrastructure (Linux servers, systemd, networking)
Serious AI/ML chops: you've integrated AI models into production systems, understand inference pipelines, and can evaluate whether a frontier model is ready for your use case or needs fine-tuning. You follow the space obsessively and have strong opinions about what's real vs. hype
You've personally built systems that handle real money — payment processing, subscription management, or financial reconciliation. You understand the paranoia required when code moves dollars
Deep infrastructure instincts: you can diagnose a production outage by reading logs, traces, and metrics — connection pool exhaustion, queue backpressure, memory leaks, disk I/O stalls
You've designed and built systems that scaled through significant growth — not theoretically, but you watched the dashboards while real traffic hit your code
Strong opinions on system design, loosely held — you can articulate tradeoffs, know when to take on tech debt vs. pay it down, and change your mind when the evidence changes
You move fast — you see a problem across three layers and fix all three in one pass. You don't create tickets for work you can do today
Bonus: experience with Temporal or workflow orchestration, self-hosted infrastructure, creator/media platforms, or crypto payments ✨

🛠 Tech You'll Touch (All of It)

React 18 · Next.js 14 · TypeScript · Tailwind CSS · NestJS 11 · Prisma · PostgreSQL · Redis · Temporal · Docker · Linux/systemd · DigitalOcean · Cloudflare R2 · Python/PyTorch · Authorize.net · Sentry · OpenTelemetry · GitHub Actions · Playwright · Storybook

💰 Compensation

$160,000 - $220,000, based on experience

Why Hygo?

This is a rare role — total ownership across a platform reaching 250 million people every month, without the layers of process that slow things down at larger companies. You'll make real architectural decisions, ship real features, and directly shape how the platform evolves. If you're the kind of engineer who gets restless when there's nothing hard to solve, you'll have no shortage of problems here.

Additional Job Application Terms

This job is part of LinkedIn’s Full-Service Hiring beta program. Eligibility is limited to candidates located in and performing services in the United States, excluding those based in Alaska, Hawaii, Nevada, South Carolina, or West Virginia.

We’re committed to making our hiring process as smooth and timely as possible, and we understand that waiting to hear back can add to the anticipation. If you’re a potential fit, our team will reach out within two weeks to progress you to the next stage. If you don’t hear from us in that time, we encourage you to explore other opportunities with our team in the future, and we wish you the very best in your job search.

Principal Engineer

Benefits