How to apply for Senior Software Engineer

About Elicit

Elicit is a public benefit company building an AI research assistant that helps researchers make better decisions by prioritizing systematicity and transparency. Unlike typical AI startups, Elicit focuses on supervising the process rather than just outcomes, aiming to create a scalable ML system that researchers can trust. Working here means contributing to a tool that augments human reasoning in academia and beyond, with a clear social mission.

About the role

As a Senior Software Engineer at Elicit, you will own the delivery of user-centric features, ensuring they ship weekly and meet high-quality standards. You'll work on a mix of new features, prototypes, and exploratory projects, directly impacting how researchers interact with AI. This role is pivotal in scaling Elicit's product to become an indispensable tool for researchers worldwide.

A typical day

A typical day might involve a morning stand-up to align on weekly feature goals, followed by coding on a user-facing feature or prototyping a new idea. You'll collaborate with designers and researchers to refine UX, review system architecture for scalability, and ensure your code is production-ready. The remote setup means you'll communicate asynchronously and might pair with teammates across time zones to solve complex problems.

Who Elicit is looking for

• Has senior-level experience building and maintaining production systems with a focus on scalability, resilience, and ease of operation.
• Thrives in a fast-paced, iterative environment, consistently delivering user-facing features on a weekly cadence.
• Contributes actively to UX, system design, and architecture discussions, balancing short-term delivery with long-term maintainability.
• Is passionate about AI for research and aligns with Elicit's mission of transparency and process supervision.

Tips for this application

• Highlight your experience shipping features weekly in a remote setting, as Elicit emphasizes weekly delivery.
• Showcase any work on ML systems or research tools, even if not directly in AI, to demonstrate domain relevance.
• Emphasize your ability to balance feature delivery with building extensible systems, as this is a core challenge in the role.
• Mention specific examples of how you've contributed to UX or architecture decisions in past roles.
• Research Elicit's product and mission thoroughly; reference how your values align with their public benefit approach in your application.

What to cover in your cover letter

['Your experience delivering user-centric features on a weekly basis in a senior engineering role.', 'Concrete examples of building scalable, resilient systems that are easy to operate.', "How you've contributed to UX, system design, or architecture discussions in previous positions.", "Your motivation to work on AI for research and alignment with Elicit's mission of transparency and process supervision."]

Research before applying

• Explore Elicit's product and blog to understand their approach to AI research assistance and process supervision.
• Read about their public benefit company structure and what that means for product decisions and company culture.
• Investigate the founders and team backgrounds to understand their technical and research priorities.
• Look for recent talks or interviews with Elicit team members to grasp their engineering challenges and roadmap.

Likely interview topics

Based on the job description, expect questions about:

• How you prioritize and ship features weekly while maintaining high quality and system extensibility.
• Your approach to designing scalable and resilient systems for production, with specific examples.
• A time you contributed to UX or architecture decisions and how you balanced trade-offs.
• How you handle exploratory projects and prototypes, and how you decide when to productize them.
• Your understanding of Elicit's mission and how you would contribute to making it a tool researchers can't live without.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Focusing only on technical skills without demonstrating alignment with Elicit's mission and user-centric approach.
• Neglecting to mention experience with weekly feature delivery or iterative development in a remote environment.
• Providing generic examples of system design without connecting them to scalability, resilience, and ease of operation.