Kobalt Labs — Full-Stack Software Engineer

Type: Full-time | On-site (NYC, 5 days/week preferred, some flexibility) | New York City, NY Compensation: $240,000–$270,000 + 0.5%–1% equity Hiring count: 3 Visa sponsorship: None to start; company may revisit H-1B transfers and O-1 after the initial search, for exceptional candidates only Reports to: Founding team — Ashi (CTO & Co-Founder) and Kalyani (Co-Founder)

About Kobalt Labs

Kobalt Labs is a Series A AI startup automating manual risk and compliance operations for fintechs and banks. Its reasoning engine ingests third-party contracts and documentation, internal policies and procedures, legal commitments, and past assessments, syncing with external legislation to auto-surface and track risks — helping fintechs run partner diligence in roughly 1/10 the time without adding headcount. The company hit $1M–$2M ARR within two months of its Series A.

Founded: 2023 | Team size: 1–10 (an elite four-person engineering team) | Total funding: Series A Industry: Fintech / Compliance / AI Website: kobaltlabs.com Office: New York City

Engineering team backgrounds: Meta, Affirm (Staff Engineer), and founding CTOs. The team is flat, moves quickly, and ships high-quality product; engineers talk directly to customers and operate at a near-founder level.

Why Candidates Should Join

• Near-founder ownership: Drive your own roadmap from direct customer interactions, with a real path to leading expansion into new product areas as the company scales in H2.
• Elite, flat team: Four engineers from Meta / Affirm (Staff) / founding-CTO backgrounds, shipping fast at a high bar — the stated internal hiring standard is "if you could get hired at Anthropic, you meet the bar."
• Exceptional traction + early equity: $1M–$2M ARR within two months of Series A, with up to 1% equity on the table for early hires.

Intake Call Summary

• An intake video is present on the Contrario page, but no transcript or intake notes were included in the captured HTML — intake-call detail could not be parsed. If you have the transcript/notes, send them and I'll fold them in.

The Role

Kobalt is hiring full-stack engineers to expand two product lines. Engineers ship across the stack, talk to customers weekly, drive the roadmap, and operate at near-founder level.

The 3 openings:

• Vendor Risk Management (frontend-leaning) — Own the frontend (React/Next.js) for the vendor risk product: a best-in-class interface for compliance teams managing third-party risk.
• Marketing Compliance (backend-leaning) — Own the backend infrastructure (Python/FastAPI): APIs, data pipelines, and systems that power automated compliance review at scale.
• Marketing Compliance (ML Engineer) — Own the ML layer: models, eval frameworks, and AI pipelines that make the product intelligent.

What You'll Be Doing

• Build and ship full-stack features across Python, FastAPI, React, and Next.js
• Work directly with customers weekly, translating feedback into improvements that work for all clients, not just one
• Drive roadmap items from your own customer interactions and product vision
• Build infrastructure and systems that are extensible and scalable, not just fast
• Contribute to architectural and technical decisions alongside the founding team
• Lead expansion into new product areas as the company grows in H2

Tech stack: Python, FastAPI, React, Next.js

Requirements

• 4 to 7 years full-stack engineering experience, staff-level thinking
• Python and FastAPI backend proficiency
• React and Next.js frontend proficiency
• High agency, identifies and solves problems without being asked
• Customer-facing, can interface with clients weekly
• Cares about product quality and real user impact

Green Flags

• Has worked at or would meet the bar for top-tier companies like Anthropic or Clay
• Startup experience, especially building products from zero to one and seeing them grow with real users
• Infrastructure or backend engineering background that demonstrates holistic systems thinking
• Degree from Caltech, MIT, UIUC, Waterloo, or equivalent top engineering program
• Founder mentality, has started something, led something, or talks about their work in terms of outcomes not just implementation
• Can articulate how what they built was actually being used, cares about adoption and user impact not just technical elegance

Red Flags

• Entire career spent at big tech with no startup exposure, often comes with risk aversion and process expectations that do not fit a 7-person team
• Talks about their work purely in technical specifications with no connection to whether it was actually used or drove value
• Needs structured processes and handoffs to operate effectively
• Not willing to be customer-facing
• Not based in or willing to relocate to New York City, in-person culture is important to the team

Role Details

Salary$240,000–$270,000Equity0.5%–1%On-site policyNYC, 5 days/week in office preferred with some flexibility; relocation assistance case-by-caseVisa sponsorshipNone to start; may revisit H-1B transfers and O-1 after initial search, for exceptional candidates onlyEmployment typeFull-timeLocationNew York City, NY

Screening Questions

None specified on the Contrario page.

Interview Process

Stage 1 — Pending Approval — Candidates awaiting initial approval. Stage 2 — Intro call with Ashi (CTO & Co-Founder) — Background and project discussion, light technical. Stage 3 — One-on-one conversations with each engineer on the team.Stage 4 — Optional coding interview.Stage 5 — Chat with Kalyani (Co-Founder).Stage 6 — Paid work trial — 2 to 3 days on-site; flights covered for out-of-town candidates. Stage 7 — Offer Extended.Stage 8 — Candidate Hired — Candidate accepts and starts.

Ideal Companies & Backgrounds

Companies surfaced on the Contrario pageTop-tier signal — Anthropic, Clay

(Only 2 companies were displayed on the page; no "Show all" expansion was present, so this list is treated as complete.)

Ideal Candidate Profiles

None provided on the Contrario page.

Rejected Candidate Feedback

None provided on the Contrario page.