Government technology has failed citizens, public servants, and service members for decades.
Kaizen powers America’s application layer. We replace the legacy systems federal agencies run on with modern software, built with craft. The ticketing platform a resident uses to visit a presidential library. The marketplace DoW uses for counter-drone procurement to protect lives and critical infrastructure. The system a Veteran uses to access benefits. We build systems of record, of national consequence. Our AI-native modules and harness allow us to do so in weeks and months, not years.
This year, our revenue has grown 35x. Next year, our software will serve over 100 million Americans across dozens of federal agencies.
Founded in 2022 and based in New York City and DC, Kaizen has raised $35 million from NEA, a16z, Accel, 776, and Carpenter Capital.
We’re excited about our growth and would love to see your application! If you don’t see a role that perfectly matches your skills and career goals, we encourage you to join our Talent Community. Please share a bit about yourself, and let us know why you’re interested in working with us.
If any of the following resonates with you, we’d love for you to become part of our community and apply:
You’re passionate about a mission that aligns with your values and motivates you to make a meaningful impact.
You thrive in the fast-paced, dynamic environment of a startup and embrace the excitement of innovation.
You’re driven to transform the government sector, making it more user-friendly and accessible for all.
You’re energized by the challenge of driving change in the public space and improving outcomes for communities.
You’re excited to collaborate with a talented, diverse team and grow both professionally and personally.
Our mission aligns with your goal of creating a lasting, positive impact on the world.
Health & Insurance
100% coverage across the board: medical through Oxford/United (Gold and Platinum PPO plans), dental through Guardian PPO, and vision through Beam — all fully covered for employees, with 100% coverage for dependents.
$100,000 in fully paid life insurance. FSA and Dependent Care FSA.
One Medical membership, on us — same-day primary care, 24/7 virtual visits, and offices all over the city.
Fertility and family-building support through Carrot.
401(k) through Guideline, with a 2% company match.
Family & Time Off
16 weeks of fully paid parental leave for birthing parents. 10 weeks fully paid for non-birthing parents.
Unlimited PTO, with a two-week minimum (we mean it when we say take time off!)
Closed for all federal holidays.
Company-wide winter break the week of Christmas.
Company offsites throughout the year.
Office & Remote Setup
Up to $750 one-time home office or desk setup stipend for NYC-based employees. $500 for remote employees.
$50/month commuter benefit (company contribution).
Expensed lunch while in the office.
Company-provided laptop of your choice.
Wellness
Fully covered gym membership at Grindhouse — right across the street from our office at 47 W 17th St (and in Williamsburg). A $225/month value, on us. For remote employees, $100/month dedicated to gym or physical fitness reimbursement.
Stipends
$100/month utility stipend.
$500/year professional development.
$250/year recreation.
$300/quarter pet care stipend.
Government technology has failed citizens, public servants, and service members for decades.
Kaizen powers America’s application layer. We replace the legacy systems federal agencies run on with modern software, built with craft. The ticketing platform a resident uses to visit a presidential library. The marketplace DoW uses for counter-drone procurement to protect lives and critical infrastructure. The system a Veteran uses to access benefits. We build systems of record, of national consequence. Our AI-native modules and harness allow us to do so in weeks and months, not years.
This year, our revenue has grown 35x. Next year, our software will serve over 100 million Americans across dozens of federal agencies.
Founded in 2022 and based in New York City and DC, Kaizen has raised $35 million from NEA, a16z, Accel, 776, and Carpenter Capital.
This role requires an active Top Secret or TS/SCI clearance. United States citizenship is required, because it is a condition of eligibility for the clearance the role depends on.
Most government software was built for compliance, not for the people who use it. Kaizen is changing that, and the engineers who work here are the reason it's possible. At the senior level, this role carries more than code: you're shaping how AI-native features get designed, scoped, and shipped across a platform that millions of Americans touch when they need something from their government. You'll be one of a small number of engineers with direct influence over what gets built and how: setting technical direction, mentoring teammates, and driving decisions that stick.
This is a hybrid role based out of our New York City HQ or DC office. Candidates must reside in New York or DC or be able to commute to New York City or DC to work out of our office at least three times a week (Tuesdays - Thursdays).
Architect and ship full-stack features end-to-end, from scoping and technical design through build, iteration, and production
Build and integrate against the Palantir stack: Foundry ontologies and pipelines, AIP agents, and Maven Smart System workflows
Build inside classification and data-handling constraints rather than around them
Lead the development of AI-powered product surfaces: intelligent intake flows, real-time constituent assistants, automated case routing, agency operator dashboards
Set technical direction and raise the bar on code quality. Your decisions become the patterns the rest of the team builds on
Engage directly with federal agency stakeholders to translate messy real-world requirements into clean, shippable product
Own platform reliability and performance at government scale: real SLAs, real users, no abstraction layer between you and accountability
Mentor earlier-career engineers through code review, pairing, and direct technical feedback
5+ years of professional engineering experience, with a track record of owning complex features and systems, not just executing on them
Hands-on development experience with Palantir Foundry, AIP, or Maven Smart System. You have modeled against the ontology, shipped pipelines or AIP agents, and can say what the platform does well and where you had to work around it
Deep fluency in React / Next.js and Node.js / TypeScript / Postgres. Fast, not just functional
AI coding tools (Cursor, Copilot, Claude) are already baked into how you work. You've shipped with them, and you move measurably faster because of it
You've built something real: a product, an open source project, a system you designed and stood behind
Proven ability to operate in ambiguity: you define the problem as often as you solve it, and you don't stall waiting for the answer to come to you
A genuine orientation toward the end user, the person on the other side of the screen isn't an abstraction to you
Have shipped software inside a classified or otherwise accredited environment, and know where the real friction lives
Have been a Forward Deployed Engineer, or worked a program where Palantir was prime and you were the one making the integration actually work
Have touched federal, state, or local government tech, or have built in other regulated, high-stakes environments where the constraints were real
Have cloud deployment depth: AWS, Vercel, GitHub Actions, ECS/Fargate
Have experience with design systems and component libraries and a clear opinion on when a component is right vs. just functional
Have led technical work in an early-stage environment where the job was figuring it out, not following a playbook
Health & Insurance
100% coverage across the board: medical through Oxford/United (Gold and Platinum PPO plans), dental through Guardian PPO, and vision through Beam — all fully covered for employees, with 100% coverage for dependents.
$100,000 in fully paid life insurance. FSA and Dependent Care FSA.
One Medical membership, on us — same-day primary care, 24/7 virtual visits, and offices all over the city.
Fertility and family-building support through Carrot.
401(k) through Guideline, with a 2% company match.
Family & Time Off
16 weeks of fully paid parental leave for birthing parents. 10 weeks fully paid for non-birthing parents.
Unlimited PTO, with a two-week minimum (we mean it when we say take time off!)
Closed for all federal holidays.
Company-wide winter break the week of Christmas.
Company offsites throughout the year.
Office & Remote Setup
Up to $750 one-time home office or desk setup stipend for NYC-based employees. $500 for remote employees.
$50/month commuter benefit (company contribution).
Expensed lunch while in the office.
Company-provided laptop of your choice.
Wellness
Fully covered gym membership at Grindhouse — right across the street from our office at 47 W 17th St (and in Williamsburg). A $225/month value, on us. For remote employees, $100/month dedicated to gym or physical fitness reimbursement.
Stipends
$100/month utility stipend.
$500/year professional development.
$250/year recreation.
$300/quarter pet care stipend.
Government technology has failed citizens, public servants, and service members for decades.
Kaizen powers America’s application layer. We replace the legacy systems federal agencies run on with modern software, built with craft. The ticketing platform a resident uses to visit a presidential library. The marketplace DoW uses for counter-drone procurement to protect lives and critical infrastructure. The system a Veteran uses to access benefits. We build systems of record, of national consequence. Our AI-native modules and harness allow us to do so in weeks and months, not years.
This year, our revenue has grown 35x. Next year, our software will serve over 100 million Americans across dozens of federal agencies.
Founded in 2022 and based in New York City and DC, Kaizen has raised $35 million from NEA, a16z, Accel, 776, and Carpenter Capital.
This is a hybrid role based out of our New York City HQ. Candidates must reside in New York or be able to commute to New York City to work out of our office at least three times a week (Tuesdays - Thursdays).
As a Senior Product Designer, you'll play a foundational role in crafting exceptional user experiences for government staff and members of the public. This high-agency opportunity will allow you to impact every aspect of design at the company: from scoping and shipping products with our engineers, to building innovative prototypes for the sales team, to creating marketing assets as we evolve our brand. In true startup fashion, you’ll wear many hats, including partnering closely with our implementation team on customer deployments and helping to define our product roadmap strategically.
Lead design work end-to-end, including:
Driving research and discovery sessions with our customers
Writing clear, well-scoped product requirement documents
Designing and iterating upon high-fidelity flows and prototypes
Collaborating side-by-side with our wonderful engineering team to bring the work to life
Contributing to Canopy, our internal design system
Partner with our implementation team on critical customer deployments by providing hands-on project management, product strategy, and customer communications
Work with the business development team to define the future of the product with robust prototyping for RFP responses and demos
Work with the leadership team to create marketing assets for socials, one-pagers for conferences, and other branded materials
4-6 years of experience in product design, preferably in a high-growth startup or agency environment
Experience designing administrative tooling
Experience designing scalable solutions for SaaS products for desktop and mobile
Experience in client services and excitement to work directly with customers
Proficiency in Figma for both design and prototyping
Workflows powered with AI tooling (ChatGPT, Figma Make, Lovable, etc.)
Experience with AI coding tools like Cursor to make your own contributions to the codebase
Health & Insurance
100% coverage across the board: medical through Oxford/United (Gold and Platinum PPO plans), dental through Guardian PPO, and vision through Beam — all fully covered for employees, with 100% coverage for dependents.
$100,000 in fully paid life insurance. FSA and Dependent Care FSA.
One Medical membership, on us — same-day primary care, 24/7 virtual visits, and offices all over the city.
Fertility and family-building support through Carrot.
401(k) through Guideline, with a 2% company match.
Family & Time Off
16 weeks of fully paid parental leave for birthing parents. 10 weeks fully paid for non-birthing parents.
Unlimited PTO, with a two-week minimum (we mean it when we say take time off!)
Closed for all federal holidays.
Company-wide winter break the week of Christmas.
Company offsites throughout the year.
Office & Remote Setup
Up to $750 one-time home office or desk setup stipend for NYC-based employees. $500 for remote employees.
$50/month commuter benefit (company contribution).
Expensed lunch while in the office.
Company-provided laptop of your choice.
Wellness
Fully covered gym membership at Grindhouse — right across the street from our office at 47 W 17th St (and in Williamsburg). A $225/month value, on us. For remote employees, $100/month dedicated to gym or physical fitness reimbursement.
Stipends
$100/month utility stipend.
$500/year professional development.
$250/year recreation.
$300/quarter pet care stipend.
Government technology has failed citizens, public servants, and service members for decades.
Kaizen powers America’s application layer. We replace the legacy systems federal agencies run on with modern software, built with craft. The ticketing platform a resident uses to visit a presidential library. The marketplace DoW uses for counter-drone procurement to protect lives and critical infrastructure. The system a Veteran uses to access benefits. We build systems of record, of national consequence. Our AI-native modules and harness allow us to do so in weeks and months, not years.
This year, our revenue has grown 35x. Next year, our software will serve over 100 million Americans across dozens of federal agencies.
Founded in 2022 and based in New York City and DC, Kaizen has raised $35 million from NEA, a16z, Accel, 776, and Carpenter Capital.
Kaizen's platform reaches 40M residents across 50+ agencies in 17 states. We've already signed multiple federal customers with many more in the pipeline, and the work of making Kaizen federal-ready is currently spread across a handful of engineers. That doesn't scale. We're hiring our first dedicated security engineer to sit on the platform team and own this end to end: architect the controls, write the SSPs, and partner with engineering to embed compliance into how we ship rather than bolt it on after.
This is a hybrid role based out of our New York City HQ. Candidates must reside in New York or be able to commute to New York City to work out of our office at least three times a week (Tuesdays - Thursdays).
Architect and operationalize security across infrastructure, platform, CI/CD, and application layers, with a focus on AWS (including GovCloud) and Terraform
Lead readiness across federal compliance frameworks (FedRAMP, CMMC, and DoD Impact Levels), translating NIST 800-53 and related controls into real engineering implementations, and owning the SSPs, POA&Ms, and technical policy documentation
Build continuous compliance and audit-readiness workflows that make accreditation a byproduct of how we ship, not a separate workstream
Be smart about AI and tooling. Use automated AI-driven security scanning, modern hardened-image platforms like Chainguard, and other leverage points to multiply the impact of a small security team
Establish secure software supply chain practices: SBOMs, image signing, workload identity, and hardened deployment pipelines
Own the technical relationship with assessors, auditors, and federal security stakeholders. You are the credible technical voice in those rooms
Drive a secure-by-default engineering culture so residents and public servants can trust the systems we put in front of them
5+ years of hands-on experience building and securing cloud-native platforms in AWS and Terraform. You can architect controls and also implement them yourself
Direct experience with federal authorization work in FedRAMP, CMMC, DoD IL, or comparable regulated environments. You don't need to have shepherded a full authorization across the finish line, but you've done enough of the real work to know what it takes
Deep familiarity with NIST 800-53 and the ability to translate controls into pragmatic engineering work rather than checkbox compliance
Strong working knowledge of modern supply chain security: SBOMs, image signing, workload identity, secure CI/CD
Track record operating effectively in early-stage or fast-moving environments where you set the bar rather than inherit it
Have supported federal SaaS, defense tech, or regulated infrastructure companies through accreditation
Have led a company through its first federal authorization rather than maintaining an existing one
Have hands-on experience with Chainguard, AI-powered security tooling, or similar leverage-multiplying platforms
Have worked with platforms like Second Front or similar federal compliance accelerators
You want to own policy and hand the implementation to someone else. This role lives in the code and the infrastructure
You think compliance is paperwork. At Kaizen it's a load-bearing engineering discipline
You think AI tools are a crutch rather than a force multiplier
You need a mature security program already in place to be effective
Health & Insurance
100% coverage across the board: medical through Oxford/United (Gold and Platinum PPO plans), dental through Guardian PPO, and vision through Beam — all fully covered for employees, with 100% coverage for dependents.
$100,000 in fully paid life insurance. FSA and Dependent Care FSA.
One Medical membership, on us — same-day primary care, 24/7 virtual visits, and offices all over the city.
Fertility and family-building support through Carrot.
401(k) through Guideline, with a 2% company match.
Family & Time Off
16 weeks of fully paid parental leave for birthing parents. 10 weeks fully paid for non-birthing parents.
Unlimited PTO, with a two-week minimum (we mean it when we say take time off!)
Closed for all federal holidays.
Company-wide winter break the week of Christmas.
Company offsites throughout the year.
Office & Remote Setup
Up to $750 one-time home office or desk setup stipend for NYC-based employees. $500 for remote employees.
$50/month commuter benefit (company contribution).
Expensed lunch while in the office.
Company-provided laptop of your choice.
Wellness
Fully covered gym membership at Grindhouse — right across the street from our office at 47 W 17th St (and in Williamsburg). A $225/month value, on us. For remote employees, $100/month dedicated to gym or physical fitness reimbursement.
Stipends
$100/month utility stipend.
$500/year professional development.
$250/year recreation.
$300/quarter pet care stipend.
Government technology has failed citizens, public servants, and service members for decades.
Kaizen powers America’s application layer. We replace the legacy systems federal agencies run on with modern software, built with craft. The ticketing platform a resident uses to visit a presidential library. The marketplace DoW uses for counter-drone procurement to protect lives and critical infrastructure. The system a Veteran uses to access benefits. We build systems of record, of national consequence. Our AI-native modules and harness allow us to do so in weeks and months, not years.
This year, our revenue has grown 35x. Next year, our software will serve over 100 million Americans across dozens of federal agencies.
Founded in 2022 and based in New York City and DC, Kaizen has raised $35 million from NEA, a16z, Accel, 776, and Carpenter Capital.
The Kaizen team is growing and the back-office and people infrastructure that got us here (onboarding, payroll, benefits, compliance, office ops) is ready to scale. This is the first dedicated People Operations hire at Kaizen. You'll take ownership of the function, build the processes that grow with the company, and be the person employees and managers turn to across every stage of the employee lifecycle.
Own onboarding and offboarding end-to-end: offer letters, I-9 verification, background checks, tools provisioning, system access setup, HM coordination, 30/60/90 check-in process, and a clean, documented exit process every time
Run payroll operations - adding new employees, processing changes, troubleshooting issues, and ensuring every run is accurate and on time
Manage the benefits program day-to-day: open enrollment, carrier coordination, employee questions, a potential PEO migration, stipend maintenance, usage tracking, and feedback loops
Own people compliance across all active states: SOS registrations, unemployment insurance, quarterly and annual filings, employee records, handbook maintenance, and working fluency with tools like Mosey, Corpnet, and AbstractOps
Own employee engagement including pulse surveys, feedback initiatives, and sentiment tracking across a distributed team. Surface themes to leadership and turn feedback into actionable improvements
Support performance management cycles: mid-year and end-of-year reviews, manager check-ins, scorecard coordination, and keeping feedback loops tight without adding unnecessary process
Coordinate and manage office gatherings, employer branding events, and more intimate team outings
Spearhead future office relocation efforts including broker relationships, touring spaces, coordinating buildouts, and ensuring seamless move-in processes
Administer equity in Carta, partnering with the CoS and Finance on option grants, termination processing, and cap table hygiene
Partner with COO and Recruiting Lead on headcount planning, leveling, and compensation frameworks
Partner with Recruiting Lead on candidate experience and recruiting operations including interview coordination, offer letter workflows, ATS hygiene, and keeping the recruiting-to-people handoff clean
Use AI tools actively to automate repetitive workflows, draft communications, and build more scalable processes — this is an expectation, not a nice-to-have
4+ years of experience in People Operations, HR Operations, or related program management roles
Experience at one or more scaling startups where you operated without a full HR team behind you
Hands-on fluency with the core People Ops toolset: Gusto or Rippling, Carta, PEOs such as Sequoia or equivalent, and compliance platforms like Vanta, Mosey, or AbstractOps
Ownership mentality: you've run a people ops or back-office function yourself, not just supported someone who did
Comfort operating across people, finance, and admin functions without needing clean lane boundaries — this role crosses all three
Clear, direct communicator who can navigate sensitive employee and manager conversations with judgment and empathy
Fluency with AI tools as a genuine part of your workflow. you use them to move faster, write better, and build processes that don't require headcount to scale
Have supported or led a PEO migration
Have familiarity with federal contracting compliance from a people/HR perspective
Have worked with SOC 2 or similar security frameworks in a people ops context
You've only worked in large orgs with a full HR team.
You're a strategist who hands off execution. At Kaizen, you define the process and then you run it.
You can't get excited about the mission. The agencies on our platform serve tens of millions of people. The infrastructure you build here matters to them.
You need a detailed ticket to know what to work on next
You get overwhelmed when the path forward isn't clear
You think AI tools are a productivity gimmick rather than a core part of how modern operators work
Health & Insurance
100% coverage across the board: medical through Oxford/United (Gold and Platinum PPO plans), dental through Guardian PPO, and vision through Beam — all fully covered for employees, with 100% coverage for dependents.
$100,000 in fully paid life insurance. FSA and Dependent Care FSA.
One Medical membership, on us — same-day primary care, 24/7 virtual visits, and offices all over the city.
Fertility and family-building support through Carrot.
401(k) through Guideline, with a 2% company match.
Family & Time Off
16 weeks of fully paid parental leave for birthing parents. 10 weeks fully paid for non-birthing parents.
Unlimited PTO, with a two-week minimum (we mean it when we say take time off!)
Closed for all federal holidays.
Company-wide winter break the week of Christmas.
Company offsites throughout the year.
Office & Remote Setup
Up to $750 one-time home office or desk setup stipend for NYC-based employees. $500 for remote employees.
$50/month commuter benefit (company contribution).
Expensed lunch while in the office.
Company-provided laptop of your choice.
Wellness
Fully covered gym membership at Grindhouse — right across the street from our office at 47 W 17th St (and in Williamsburg). A $225/month value, on us. For remote employees, $100/month dedicated to gym or physical fitness reimbursement.
Stipends
$100/month utility stipend.
$500/year professional development.
$250/year recreation.
$300/quarter pet care stipend.
Government technology has failed citizens, public servants, and service members for decades.
Kaizen powers America’s application layer. We replace the legacy systems federal agencies run on with modern software, built with craft. The ticketing platform a resident uses to visit a presidential library. The marketplace DoW uses for counter-drone procurement to protect lives and critical infrastructure. The system a Veteran uses to access benefits. We build systems of record, of national consequence. Our AI-native modules and harness allow us to do so in weeks and months, not years.
This year, our revenue has grown 35x. Next year, our software will serve over 100 million Americans across dozens of federal agencies.
Founded in 2022 and based in New York City and DC, Kaizen has raised $35 million from NEA, a16z, Accel, 776, and Carpenter Capital.
Kaizen's proposal and capture function is expanding to keep pace with the increasing volume of competitive Federal solicitations! This role addresses this demand head-on: a hire fully dedicated to Federal proposal and capture, responsible for the writing, strategy, and process that win competitive contracts with the U.S. Government. You'll own solicitation responses, white papers, solution briefs, and unsolicited proposals end-to-end, and shape how Kaizen's Federal proposal function scales as the team grows. This is a rare chance to build something from the ground up at a company that has already proven it can win, at a moment when Federal demand for what Kaizen builds keeps climbing.
This is a hybrid role based out of either our New York City HQ or DC office. Candidates must be able to commute to either NYC or DC to work out of our office at least three times a week (Tuesdays - Thursdays).
Own the full development and submission of Federal solicitation responses, including RFx responses, white papers, solution briefs, and unsolicited proposals, from first draft through submission.
Monitor Federal contracting channels beyond SAM.gov to surface new opportunities that fit Kaizen's strengths.
Partner with product, engineering, and partnerships to translate technical work into narratives that win with Federal contracting officers, work that ultimately gets modern tools into the hands of the agencies serving millions of Americans.
Build the AI-assisted workflows and templates that let Kaizen's Federal proposal function move faster as the team grows.
Work alongside David to sharpen capture strategy, spot what a strong-fit opportunity looks like, and prep for competitive deals with the Federal BD team.
Catch the requirements a solicitation does not explicitly spell out, since missing them is often the difference between a compliant response and a losing one.
Represent Kaizen at virtual industry days and other Federal BD activities as needed.
At least 8 years of experience writing and winning proposals for Federal government solicitations.
Experience at a startup or fast-moving tech company, not solely at large, established Federal contracting firms.
Deep fluency in Federal procurement, including working with contracting officers, developing unsolicited proposals, knowing which procurement channels to monitor beyond SAM.gov, and understanding the terminology and mechanics of different solicitation types.
A sharp eye for detail. In this role, missing a small requirement can sink an otherwise strong response.
A self-starter who takes on work without needing to be told what is next, and who asks for feedback rather than waiting for it.
Real, hands-on experience using AI tools in proposal and capture work, not just familiarity with the concept.
Have experience at a fast-growing, mission-driven technology company, think Palantir, Anduril, or similar, rather than a large traditional Federal contracting firm.
Have been part of a small, nimble proposal and capture team before.
Have owned the full spectrum of both capture strategy and proposal development, not just one half of the process.
You need a highly structured environment with a clear playbook for every task. This role is still being built, and you will be shaping the process as much as executing it.
You are not genuinely energized by government work. Federal contracting has a learning curve, and half-hearted interest shows up fast in the writing.
You would rather wait for direction than figure out the next right move yourself.
You are comfortable letting small details slide. In Federal solicitations, the fine print is often the whole ballgame.
If you want to help decide how the Federal government experiences modern software, and you are willing to do the unglamorous work of winning the right to build it, this is worth a conversation.
Health & Insurance
100% coverage across the board: medical through Oxford/United (Gold and Platinum PPO plans), dental through Guardian PPO, and vision through Beam — all fully covered for employees, with 100% coverage for dependents.
$100,000 in fully paid life insurance. FSA and Dependent Care FSA.
One Medical membership, on us — same-day primary care, 24/7 virtual visits, and offices all over the city.
Fertility and family-building support through Carrot.
401(k) through Guideline, with a 2% company match.
Family & Time Off
16 weeks of fully paid parental leave for birthing parents. 10 weeks fully paid for non-birthing parents.
Unlimited PTO, with a two-week minimum (we mean it when we say take time off!)
Closed for all federal holidays.
Company-wide winter break the week of Christmas.
Company offsites throughout the year.
Office & Remote Setup
Up to $750 one-time home office or desk setup stipend for NYC-based employees. $500 for remote employees.
$50/month commuter benefit (company contribution).
Expensed lunch while in the office.
Company-provided laptop of your choice.
Wellness
Fully covered gym membership at Grindhouse — right across the street from our office at 47 W 17th St (and in Williamsburg). A $225/month value, on us. For remote employees, $100/month dedicated to gym or physical fitness reimbursement.
Stipends
$100/month utility stipend.
$500/year professional development.
$250/year recreation.
$300/quarter pet care stipend.
Government technology has failed citizens, public servants, and service members for decades.
Kaizen powers America’s application layer. We replace the legacy systems federal agencies run on with modern software, built with craft. The ticketing platform a resident uses to visit a presidential library. The marketplace DoW uses for counter-drone procurement to protect lives and critical infrastructure. The system a Veteran uses to access benefits. We build systems of record, of national consequence. Our AI-native modules and harness allow us to do so in weeks and months, not years.
This year, our revenue has grown 35x. Next year, our software will serve over 100 million Americans across dozens of federal agencies.
Founded in 2022 and based in New York City and DC, Kaizen has raised $35 million from NEA, a16z, Accel, 776, and Carpenter Capital.
Kaizen is entering its most visible moment. We’re building a new AI harness that will allow us to rapidly scale against government needs, and our platforms are slated to serve hundreds of millions of Americans. Our software is world-class, and we need a phenomenal digital designer to help our brand catch-up.
We're looking for someone who can build stunning landing pages that make agency stakeholders lean forward, craft motion and illustration work that brings government software to life, and establish a visual identity that reflects where we're going, not where we've been. This isn't a production role, and it isn't executing someone else's vision. It's setting how the world sees Kaizen, and shipping that work firsthand.
Design and ship landing pages, campaign sites, and entry points for agency platforms that convert both agency stakeholders and mission-driven talent. This is an unbelievably serious responsibility — your work will be the first impression between a constituent and the government meant to serve them, and it will shape whether they trust it enough to continue.
Build the constituent-facing visual system (the typographic voice, the motion language, the illustration style), so that every agency application we ship carries an unmistakable Kaizen signature, and a person moving between two Kaizen-built services feels the same hand at work.
Develop Kaizen's own web presence including the marketing site, launch moments, flyers, and campaign work that convince agency stakeholders and mission-driven talent that we're the team to bet on.
Ship your own work in code. You won't be handing files to an engineer and hoping for the best
Use AI-native creative tools as real leverage. You'll produce at a volume and quality that wouldn't otherwise be possible at our size.
Partner directly with Sales and BD on federal pitch materials, demo environments, and proposal assets where stunning visual quality is part of the close.
Work closely with our Design Lead, CEO, and engineering teams to make sure the product and brand feel like they came from the same mind. You’ll share work early, ship often, and treat feedback as signal.
A portfolio with real range: web design work that's both beautiful and functional, motion with craft and intention, illustration that doesn't read as stock
A record of shipping independently, start to finish. You build with tools like Claude Code against your most ambitious idea instead of scoping down to what you can hand off
Strong command of web-native design, including how layouts, typography, and interactions actually behave in a browser, and how to design for that
Fluency with motion and animation tools (After Effects, Rive, Lottie, Jitter, or equivalent), used to add clarity rather than noise
Fluency with AI creative tools such as Midjourney, Runway, or Firefly, or whatever's currently best, used as genuine creative leverage
Experience building or significantly evolving a brand system from first principles, and the range to take a set of values and a roadmap and come back with something that surprises people
Have designed for B2G, B2B, or mission-driven organizations where credibility carries as much weight as aesthetics
Have worked against USWDS or a comparable government design standard, and have opinions about it
Have a point of view on what great government-facing design looks like, and why so little of it exists
You don’t believe deeply in our mission to scale design across all government agencies. We want designers focused on mission, purpose, and quality.
You need a detailed brief and finished brand guidelines before you can produce. We're building both, and you're part of how we get there
You treat AI tools as a threat to craft rather than a multiplier of it. This team is AI-native by default.
Your work skews towards visual polish in isolation. We need design that performs, not just design that looks good in a case study
You'd rather iterate inside a system than build one from scratch.
You want to hand off to someone else when it’s time to actually ship. The people using what Kaizen builds are farmers applying for loans, service members finding housing, and immigrants navigating case management. The quality of what you make here is not abstract.
Health & Insurance
100% coverage across the board: medical through Oxford/United (Gold and Platinum PPO plans), dental through Guardian PPO, and vision through Beam — all fully covered for employees, with 100% coverage for dependents.
$100,000 in fully paid life insurance. FSA and Dependent Care FSA.
One Medical membership, on us — same-day primary care, 24/7 virtual visits, and offices all over the city.
Fertility and family-building support through Carrot.
401(k) through Guideline, with a 2% company match.
Family & Time Off
16 weeks of fully paid parental leave for birthing parents. 10 weeks fully paid for non-birthing parents.
Unlimited PTO, with a two-week minimum (we mean it when we say take time off!)
Closed for all federal holidays.
Company-wide winter break the week of Christmas.
Company offsites throughout the year.
Office & Remote Setup
Up to $750 one-time home office or desk setup stipend for NYC-based employees. $500 for remote employees.
$50/month commuter benefit (company contribution).
Expensed lunch while in the office.
Company-provided laptop of your choice.
Wellness
Fully covered gym membership at Grindhouse — right across the street from our office at 47 W 17th St (and in Williamsburg). A $225/month value, on us. For remote employees, $100/month dedicated to gym or physical fitness reimbursement.
Stipends
$100/month utility stipend.
$500/year professional development.
$250/year recreation.
$300/quarter pet care stipend.
Government technology has failed citizens, public servants, and service members for decades.
Kaizen powers America’s application layer. We replace the legacy systems federal agencies run on with modern software, built with craft. The ticketing platform a resident uses to visit a presidential library. The marketplace DoW uses for counter-drone procurement to protect lives and critical infrastructure. The system a Veteran uses to access benefits. We build systems of record, of national consequence. Our AI-native modules and harness allow us to do so in weeks and months, not years.
This year, our revenue has grown 35x. Next year, our software will serve over 100 million Americans across dozens of federal agencies.
Founded in 2022 and based in New York City and DC, Kaizen has raised $35 million from NEA, a16z, Accel, 776, and Carpenter Capital.
Kaizen has already won real federal civilian business: a $10M IDIQ with the VA, a ~$15M BPA with the Department of Commerce, and active conversations underway with SSA, OPM, USDA, CMS, State, SBA, HUD, FBI, and Rural Development. This person will own the full sales cycle across that portfolio of civilian agencies, turning early wins and warm conversations into a repeatable growth motion. That means navigating GSA MAS, IDIQs, BPAs, and agency task orders, and building direct relationships with program offices and contracting officers who are tired of being sold vaporware. At this level of seniority, we need someone who already knows how civilian federal agencies buy and can move without a playbook.
Own the full civilian federal sales cycle end to end, from outbound prospecting through demos, proposals, negotiation, and close
Build and execute Kaizen's FedCiv go-to-market strategy, expanding on existing wins with the VA and Department of Commerce into agencies like SSA, OPM, USDA, CMS, State, SBA, HUD, FBI, and Rural Development
Navigate civilian procurement pathways, including GSA MAS, IDIQs, BPAs, and agency-specific task orders
Build direct relationships with program offices, IT stakeholders, and contracting officers across civilian agencies
Lead discovery sessions and in-person product demos, comfortable presenting independently without SE support
Partner with Proposal & Capture and Design on solicitation responses, including positioning, requirements mapping, and project management
Help agencies responsible for benefits, case management, and constituent services replace decades-old systems with something residents can actually use
10+ years of experience in sales or growth roles, with significant time spent selling into U.S. federal civilian agencies
A full-cycle enterprise sales track record, including closing complex, multi-stakeholder deals
Experience working large deals, not just carrying a large number, but a track record of actually closing against it
Fluency navigating civilian federal procurement vehicles and buying cycles
Comfort demoing software independently, without SE support
Proficiency with sales tools like Salesforce, Outreach, Gong, LinkedIn, and ZoomInfo
Have existing relationships within agencies like SSA, HUD, USDA, or CMS
Have experience selling benefits or case management modernization specifically
Have a background navigating GWACs or large multi-award IDIQs
You want a book that's already built — this one has real wins, but most of the map is still open
You're uncomfortable being the one who has to build the relationship from a cold or lukewarm start
You think \"government sales\" means slow and passive — this can move as fast as the agency will let it
This isn't about closing another logo. It's about getting agencies that serve millions of people out of decades-old systems and into something residents can actually use.
Health & Insurance
100% coverage across the board: medical through Oxford/United (Gold and Platinum PPO plans), dental through Guardian PPO, and vision through Beam — all fully covered for employees, with 100% coverage for dependents.
$100,000 in fully paid life insurance. FSA and Dependent Care FSA.
One Medical membership, on us — same-day primary care, 24/7 virtual visits, and offices all over the city.
Fertility and family-building support through Carrot.
401(k) through Guideline, with a 2% company match.
Family & Time Off
16 weeks of fully paid parental leave for birthing parents. 10 weeks fully paid for non-birthing parents.
Unlimited PTO, with a two-week minimum (we mean it when we say take time off!)
Closed for all federal holidays.
Company-wide winter break the week of Christmas.
Company offsites throughout the year.
Office & Remote Setup
Up to $750 one-time home office or desk setup stipend for NYC-based employees. $500 for remote employees.
$50/month commuter benefit (company contribution).
Expensed lunch while in the office.
Company-provided laptop of your choice.
Wellness
Fully covered gym membership at Grindhouse — right across the street from our office at 47 W 17th St (and in Williamsburg). A $225/month value, on us. For remote employees, $100/month dedicated to gym or physical fitness reimbursement.
Stipends
$100/month utility stipend.
$500/year professional development.
$250/year recreation.
$300/quarter pet care stipend.
Government technology has failed citizens, public servants, and service members for decades.
Kaizen powers America’s application layer. We replace the legacy systems federal agencies run on with modern software, built with craft. The ticketing platform a resident uses to visit a presidential library. The marketplace DoW uses for counter-drone procurement to protect lives and critical infrastructure. The system a Veteran uses to access benefits. We build systems of record, of national consequence. Our AI-native modules and harness allow us to do so in weeks and months, not years.
This year, our revenue has grown 35x. Next year, our software will serve over 100 million Americans across dozens of federal agencies.
Founded in 2022 and based in New York City and DC, Kaizen has raised $35 million from NEA, a16z, Accel, 776, and Carpenter Capital.
This role requires an active Top Secret or TS/SCI clearance. United States citizenship is required, because it is a condition of eligibility for the clearance the role depends on.
Most government software was built for compliance, not for the people who use it. Kaizen is changing that, and the engineers who work here are the reason it's possible. At the senior level, this role carries more than code: you're shaping how AI-native features get designed, scoped, and shipped across a platform that millions of Americans touch when they need something from their government. You'll be one of a small number of engineers with direct influence over what gets built and how: setting technical direction, mentoring teammates, and driving decisions that stick.
This is a hybrid role based out of our New York City HQ or DC office. Candidates must reside in New York or DC or be able to commute to New York City or DC to work out of our office at least three times a week (Tuesdays - Thursdays).
Architect and ship full-stack features end-to-end, from scoping and technical design through build, iteration, and production
Build and integrate against the Palantir stack: Foundry ontologies and pipelines, AIP agents, and Maven Smart System workflows
Build inside classification and data-handling constraints rather than around them
Lead the development of AI-powered product surfaces: intelligent intake flows, real-time constituent assistants, automated case routing, agency operator dashboards
Set technical direction and raise the bar on code quality. Your decisions become the patterns the rest of the team builds on
Engage directly with federal agency stakeholders to translate messy real-world requirements into clean, shippable product
Own platform reliability and performance at government scale: real SLAs, real users, no abstraction layer between you and accountability
Mentor earlier-career engineers through code review, pairing, and direct technical feedback
5+ years of professional engineering experience, with a track record of owning complex features and systems, not just executing on them
Hands-on development experience with Palantir Foundry, AIP, or Maven Smart System. You have modeled against the ontology, shipped pipelines or AIP agents, and can say what the platform does well and where you had to work around it
Deep fluency in React / Next.js and Node.js / TypeScript / Postgres. Fast, not just functional
AI coding tools (Cursor, Copilot, Claude) are already baked into how you work. You've shipped with them, and you move measurably faster because of it
You've built something real: a product, an open source project, a system you designed and stood behind
Proven ability to operate in ambiguity: you define the problem as often as you solve it, and you don't stall waiting for the answer to come to you
A genuine orientation toward the end user, the person on the other side of the screen isn't an abstraction to you
Have shipped software inside a classified or otherwise accredited environment, and know where the real friction lives
Have been a Forward Deployed Engineer, or worked a program where Palantir was prime and you were the one making the integration actually work
Have touched federal, state, or local government tech, or have built in other regulated, high-stakes environments where the constraints were real
Have cloud deployment depth: AWS, Vercel, GitHub Actions, ECS/Fargate
Have experience with design systems and component libraries and a clear opinion on when a component is right vs. just functional
Have led technical work in an early-stage environment where the job was figuring it out, not following a playbook
Health & Insurance
100% coverage across the board: medical through Oxford/United (Gold and Platinum PPO plans), dental through Guardian PPO, and vision through Beam — all fully covered for employees, with 100% coverage for dependents.
$100,000 in fully paid life insurance. FSA and Dependent Care FSA.
One Medical membership, on us — same-day primary care, 24/7 virtual visits, and offices all over the city.
Fertility and family-building support through Carrot.
401(k) through Guideline, with a 2% company match.
Family & Time Off
16 weeks of fully paid parental leave for birthing parents. 10 weeks fully paid for non-birthing parents.
Unlimited PTO, with a two-week minimum (we mean it when we say take time off!)
Closed for all federal holidays.
Company-wide winter break the week of Christmas.
Company offsites throughout the year.
Office & Remote Setup
Up to $750 one-time home office or desk setup stipend for NYC-based employees. $500 for remote employees.
$50/month commuter benefit (company contribution).
Expensed lunch while in the office.
Company-provided laptop of your choice.
Wellness
Fully covered gym membership at Grindhouse — right across the street from our office at 47 W 17th St (and in Williamsburg). A $225/month value, on us. For remote employees, $100/month dedicated to gym or physical fitness reimbursement.
Stipends
$100/month utility stipend.
$500/year professional development.
$250/year recreation.
$300/quarter pet care stipend.
Government technology has failed citizens, public servants, and service members for decades.
Kaizen powers America’s application layer. We replace the legacy systems federal agencies run on with modern software, built with craft. The ticketing platform a resident uses to visit a presidential library. The marketplace DoW uses for counter-drone procurement to protect lives and critical infrastructure. The system a Veteran uses to access benefits. We build systems of record, of national consequence. Our AI-native modules and harness allow us to do so in weeks and months, not years.
This year, our revenue has grown 35x. Next year, our software will serve over 100 million Americans across dozens of federal agencies.
Founded in 2022 and based in New York City and DC, Kaizen has raised $35 million from NEA, a16z, Accel, 776, and Carpenter Capital.
Every American has had a frustrating experience on a .gov site. Almost nobody has seen what it looks like when one gets fixed — a veteran filing a claim in minutes that used to take hours, a park ranger seamlessly checking in families at the gate, a military family getting orders to relocate 3,000 miles and feeling supported in the process.
Kaizen builds the modern alternative to government technology, and is on track to power federal technology serving 100 million residents and public servants within the next 12 months. Almost none of that story is captured today.
We're hiring a Filmmaker/Content Lead to fix that. You'll build and run Kaizen Studio (open to naming suggestions): the creative function that captures Kaizen's work across customers, tells the story of the team building it, and defines how Kaizen shows up to candidates, customers, and investors alike.
This is an individual contributor role to start, and not a marketing generalist role where you inherit a demand-gen calendar. You drive creative efforts with video: customer films, recruiting films, founder pieces, launch content, and whatever else you can dream up to tell these stories well. You get a real budget, real equity, and a real say in the emotion Kaizen evokes.
This is a hybrid role based out of our New York City HQ. Candidates must reside in New York or be able to commute to New York City to work out of our office at least three times a week (Tuesdays - Thursdays). Periodic travel to be on-site with the team (agency visits, offsites, DC trips).
Build and run Kaizen Studio. Set the creative direction and visual identity for how Kaizen shows up across every audience: customers, candidates, and investors
Produce cinematic customer films capturing Kaizen's deployments in the field: the ranger at the gate, the veteran filing a claim, the parent enrolling in benefits, the family relocating across the country
Shoot documentary-style, behind-the-scenes footage of the team on the road such as the hours before a big meeting, how various teams collaborate on the ground, and what it looks like to build trust with an agency in person
Run a recurring recruiting film series, covering team events, offsites, day-to-day culture, and the stories behind what draws people to Kaizen’s mission
Produce founder pieces and launch content tied to new federal contracts and deployments as Kaizen scales past 100 people
Own production end-to-end on lean shoots: filming, editing, and delivering finished content without waiting on a crew
Direct and brief contractors (editors, camera operators) on larger productions, making sure their output matches our bar for quality and creativity
Experience producing and directing video solo or with a small crew, from concept through final edit
A demonstrated point of view on visual storytelling — not just technical execution, but a clear sense of what makes content feel distinct
A portfolio that shows range: cinematic storytelling, documentary-style capture, and content built for different audiences (customer-facing, recruiting, executive)
Comfort working directly with founders to shape how a company's story gets told, without needing a brief handed to you
Experience briefing and directing contractors on larger shoots, including holding their work to a creative standard
Good judgment on scoping a shoot — knowing when something can be shot solo and when it needs a hired crew
Willingness to travel periodically to be embedded with the team on-site, including federal sites
Experience leveraging AI tooling for pre-viz, assembly, and cleanup, with a clean POV on where it provides the most value in your work
The ability to eventually lead and grow an in-house team for production and editing
Be comfortable stepping in front of the camera themselves for lighter, scrappier content
Have built an in-house creative studio or content function from scratch, not just contributed to an existing one
Have experience with motion design and graphic design in video contexts
Have experience filming in sensitive, access-limited, or bureaucratic environments (government, healthcare, defense)
Bring a point of view shaped by B2B creative studios doing something in this spirit (in-house brand/content teams at tech companies, for example)
You only want to own production — this role may require scrappy shoots where you're also the one behind the camera and guiding creative direction
You're a freelancer looking for one-off gigs, not someone who wants to embed with a team long-term
You'd rather have someone else set the creative vision and just execute against a brief
Health & Insurance
100% coverage across the board: medical through Oxford/United (Gold and Platinum PPO plans), dental through Guardian PPO, and vision through Beam — all fully covered for employees, with 100% coverage for dependents.
$100,000 in fully paid life insurance. FSA and Dependent Care FSA.
One Medical membership, on us — same-day primary care, 24/7 virtual visits, and offices all over the city.
Fertility and family-building support through Carrot.
401(k) through Guideline, with a 2% company match.
Family & Time Off
16 weeks of fully paid parental leave for birthing parents. 10 weeks fully paid for non-birthing parents.
Unlimited PTO, with a two-week minimum (we mean it when we say take time off!)
Closed for all federal holidays.
Company-wide winter break the week of Christmas.
Company offsites throughout the year.
Office & Remote Setup
Up to $750 one-time home office or desk setup stipend for NYC-based employees. $500 for remote employees.
$50/month commuter benefit (company contribution).
Expensed lunch while in the office.
Company-provided laptop of your choice.
Wellness
Fully covered gym membership at Grindhouse — right across the street from our office at 47 W 17th St (and in Williamsburg). A $225/month value, on us. For remote employees, $100/month dedicated to gym or physical fitness reimbursement.
Stipends
$100/month utility stipend.
$500/year professional development.
$250/year recreation.
$300/quarter pet care stipend.
Government technology has failed citizens, public servants, and service members for decades.
Kaizen powers America’s application layer. We replace the legacy systems federal agencies run on with modern software, built with craft. The ticketing platform a resident uses to visit a presidential library. The marketplace DoW uses for counter-drone procurement to protect lives and critical infrastructure. The system a Veteran uses to access benefits. We build systems of record, of national consequence. Our AI-native modules and harness allow us to do so in weeks and months, not years.
This year, our revenue has grown 35x. Next year, our software will serve over 100 million Americans across dozens of federal agencies.
Founded in 2022 and based in New York City and DC, Kaizen has raised $35 million from NEA, a16z, Accel, 776, and Carpenter Capital.
Kaizen is scaling fast on the government side, and our GTM hiring hasn't caught up to the pace of the business. We're standing up federal sales, building out G&A, and growing operations, all at once, and we need someone who can run point on that without a playbook handed to them. This isn't a role where you post a job and wait. You'll build relationships with candidates before they're looking, run a white-glove process end to end, and make Kaizen the kind of place people leave a good job for. The person who takes this on will shape how Kaizen hires for some of its highest-stakes, highest-visibility roles, at a company where every hire still meaningfully moves the needle.
Own full-cycle recruiting for federal sales hiring initiatives, all G&A roles, and operations, from intake through offer
Build and run relationship-based sourcing strategies rather than relying on inbound or job board traffic
Deliver a white-glove candidate experience at every touchpoint, from first outreach to offer stage
Use AI tools as a core part of how you source, screen, and manage pipeline, not as an occasional shortcut
Partner directly with hiring managers across federal sales, G&A, and ops to translate vague hiring needs into sharp, specific searches
Build sourcing pipelines for roles where the candidate pool is thin or highly specialized, particularly federal/public sector sales talent
Represent Kaizen's mission credibly to candidates who could work anywhere, and help them see why government technology is worth their next move
5+ years of full-cycle recruiting experience, with a track record of owning searches independently
Experience recruiting for GTM, sales, or G&A functions, ideally including some exposure to federal, public sector, or otherwise specialized talent pools
A relationship-first sourcing style. You build pipeline through real outreach and follow-through, not just search strings
Genuine fluency with AI tools in your day-to-day recruiting workflow. This isn't a nice-to-have here, it's how the job gets done
Comfort operating with minimal process and building your own structure as you go
Have experience recruiting into a startup or other high-ambiguity environment where the role gets defined as you go
Have prior exposure to federal contracting, govtech, or public sector hiring
Have built or improved a recruiting process or tool stack at a previous company, not just used one
You want a fully-built process and a steady stream of inbound to work from. This role is about building the pipeline, not managing one that already exists
You see AI tools as something to dabble in when convenient. Here, they're core infrastructure
You need a lot of structure or sign-off to move on a search. We need someone who runs with ambiguity, not someone who waits for it to resolve
You're recruiting to fill seats. We're recruiting because the people we hire into federal sales, G&A, and ops will shape whether Kaizen earns trust with the agencies we serve, and that only works if you care about getting it right, not just getting it done
Health & Insurance
100% coverage across the board: medical through Oxford/United (Gold and Platinum PPO plans), dental through Guardian PPO, and vision through Beam — all fully covered for employees, with 100% coverage for dependents.
$100,000 in fully paid life insurance. FSA and Dependent Care FSA.
One Medical membership, on us — same-day primary care, 24/7 virtual visits, and offices all over the city.
Fertility and family-building support through Carrot.
401(k) through Guideline, with a 2% company match.
Family & Time Off
16 weeks of fully paid parental leave for birthing parents. 10 weeks fully paid for non-birthing parents.
Unlimited PTO, with a two-week minimum (we mean it when we say take time off!)
Closed for all federal holidays.
Company-wide winter break the week of Christmas.
Company offsites throughout the year.
Office & Remote Setup
Up to $750 one-time home office or desk setup stipend for NYC-based employees. $500 for remote employees.
$50/month commuter benefit (company contribution).
Expensed lunch while in the office.
Company-provided laptop of your choice.
Wellness
Fully covered gym membership at Grindhouse — right across the street from our office at 47 W 17th St (and in Williamsburg). A $225/month value, on us. For remote employees, $100/month dedicated to gym or physical fitness reimbursement.
Stipends
$100/month utility stipend.
$500/year professional development.
$250/year recreation.
$300/quarter pet care stipend.
Government technology has failed citizens, public servants, and service members for decades.
Kaizen powers America’s application layer. We replace the legacy systems federal agencies run on with modern software, built with craft. The ticketing platform a resident uses to visit a presidential library. The marketplace DoW uses for counter-drone procurement to protect lives and critical infrastructure. The system a Veteran uses to access benefits. We build systems of record, of national consequence. Our AI-native modules and harness allow us to do so in weeks and months, not years.
This year, our revenue has grown 35x. Next year, our software will serve over 100 million Americans across dozens of federal agencies.
Founded in 2022 and based in New York City and DC, Kaizen has raised $35 million from NEA, a16z, Accel, 776, and Carpenter Capital.
Selling software to the federal government is supposed to take years. Long procurement cycles, entrenched primes, and pilots that die before they convert. We found a market and a motion that break that pattern, and Kaizen is on track to go from $1M to nine figures in 24 months. Nobody in the history of government technology has done that.
Which means the constraint is no longer whether we can sell or if we can win. It is whether we can hire fast enough, and whether we can go after the people we assume are out of reach. This role owns that. You will carry concurrent searches across GTM, operations, engineering, and design, build the systems and the team underneath them, and personally close the hardest ones. You will also change what this company believes is possible in hiring. The bar goes up by going after the best of the best, and this conviction starts with you.
This is the most influential window Kaizen will ever have. The next sixty people become the company. This starts as a talent-focused role. As the function grows, it can grow to include People more broadly.
Build and run Kaizen's recruiting engine: process, pipeline, and reporting across every function we hire into.
Own the hiring bar and raise it across the company. Not by saying no more often, but by convincing us we can win over the best talent, and making it happen.
Carry concurrent searches across go-to-market, operations, engineering, and design, and personally close the senior and executive ones.
Own the recruiting stack in Ashby, Juicebox, and LinkedIn Recruiter, give leadership a live view of pipeline health against the plan, and drive the automation of coordination work so the team spends its time on candidates.
Manage the team of three and hire the additional recruiters already approved, set the standard for excellent recruiting here, and invest in the career growth of the people you inherit.
Own the agency roster: evaluate the current partners, negotiate terms, and decide search by search when a firm earns its fee.
Establish Kaizen's employer brand in the NYC and DC markets so strong candidates understand the unique product and value proposition of Kaizen.
Partner with the COO and founding team on headcount planning and the talent strategy behind a 40-to-100 plan in the next few quarters.
You have scaled a talent function through significant headcount growth, and can point to what you built and what it produced.
You have operated as a trusted peer to company founders. You are direct, say the hard things that need to be said, and take ownership.
You have a real answer for why people should work at Kaizen, and you can make the federal opportunity land with a candidate who has never considered public sector work.
Real relationships and depth of understanding of the NYC engineering community.
You have managed a recruiting team including recruiters, coordinators, and sourcers. This includes investing in their career growth and development.
You have carried concurrent searches across engineering and go-to-market, from IC through Director and above, including roles with no obvious candidate pool.
You use AI and automation in your own recruiting workflow today, and you have configured an ATS yourself, ideally Ashby.
Have recruited in government, defense tech, or another regulated industry where the sell is harder than the salary.
Have run or managed retained executive searches, and know when a firm earns its fee and when it does not.
Want to grow into broader people operations as the function matures.
You have only recruited where a sourcing team, a coordinator, and an established employer brand were already in place. The systems here are built for today's volume, and scaling them for three times the load is the job.
Your first move on a hard search is to call an agency. Firms should be part of your toolkit, not a reflex you depend on.
You think raising the bar means saying no more often. Here it means going after people who would not currently take the call.
You want a settled process before you can produce. Ours is built for a 40-person company and has to carry a hundred.
You want to run talent from the strategy layer. You will be expected to personally help source and close senior candidates.
The public sector reads to you as a step down rather than the most under-served software market in the country.
Health & Insurance
100% coverage across the board: medical through Oxford/United (Gold and Platinum PPO plans), dental through Guardian PPO, and vision through Beam — all fully covered for employees, with 100% coverage for dependents.
$100,000 in fully paid life insurance. FSA and Dependent Care FSA.
One Medical membership, on us — same-day primary care, 24/7 virtual visits, and offices all over the city.
Fertility and family-building support through Carrot.
401(k) through Guideline, with a 2% company match.
Family & Time Off
16 weeks of fully paid parental leave for birthing parents. 10 weeks fully paid for non-birthing parents.
Unlimited PTO, with a two-week minimum (we mean it when we say take time off!)
Closed for all federal holidays.
Company-wide winter break the week of Christmas.
Company offsites throughout the year.
Office & Remote Setup
Up to $750 one-time home office or desk setup stipend for NYC-based employees. $500 for remote employees.
$50/month commuter benefit (company contribution).
Expensed lunch while in the office.
Company-provided laptop of your choice.
Wellness
Fully covered gym membership at Grindhouse — right across the street from our office at 47 W 17th St (and in Williamsburg). A $225/month value, on us. For remote employees, $100/month dedicated to gym or physical fitness reimbursement.
Stipends
$100/month utility stipend.
$500/year professional development.
$250/year recreation.
$300/quarter pet care stipend.
Government technology has failed citizens, public servants, and service members for decades.
Kaizen powers America’s application layer. We replace the legacy systems federal agencies run on with modern software, built with craft. The ticketing platform a resident uses to visit a presidential library. The marketplace DoW uses for counter-drone procurement to protect lives and critical infrastructure. The system a Veteran uses to access benefits. We build systems of record, of national consequence. Our AI-native modules and harness allow us to do so in weeks and months, not years.
This year, our revenue has grown 35x. Next year, our software will serve over 100 million Americans across dozens of federal agencies.
Founded in 2022 and based in New York City and DC, Kaizen has raised $35 million from NEA, a16z, Accel, 776, and Carpenter Capital.
We built an internal tool called Bidbuddy. Before it existed, someone on our team spent eight hours a week scraping procurement sites, pulling RFPs by hand, and reading them to figure out which ones were worth chasing. Now one system does the scraping and the first pass of analysis. Those eight hours went back to the people doing the actual work of winning.
That's one tool. We need many more, and most of them don't exist yet. Kaizen is about 40 people supporting software that reaches 40 million residents across 50+ agencies in 17 states, and the only way that math holds is if the company runs on tools instead of hours.
This role owns that. You'll go department by department, find where the time goes, and build the thing that takes it back. Sometimes that's an internal app. Sometimes it's an automation nobody notices. Sometimes it's teaching a team to use AI properly, which is often the highest leverage thing available. Then you roll it out and stay on it until people actually use it. We already have the list, and it's long.
This is a hybrid role based out of our New York City HQ. Candidates must reside in New York or be able to commute to New York City to work out of our office at least three times a week (Tuesdays - Thursdays).
Own internal tools end to end, from the hallway conversation that surfaces the problem through architecture, build, rollout, and the week two fixes.
Build AI powered internal systems in the mold of Bidbuddy: document parsing and analysis, agentic workflows, automated research and routing, and tooling that turns hours of manual work into minutes.
Work directly with leads across Proposals, Customer Ops, Sales, Design, and Engineering to find where the time is going, and translate half-formed asks into something worth building.
Drive AI enablement across the company. Every person at Kaizen should know how to get the most out of these tools.
Support the external analytics layer inside Kaizen's platform, so customers have clear, actionable data at their fingertips
Back up the deployment team during an implementation
2 to 5 years of engineering, data, or applied AI experience, or work that makes the years irrelevant. Slope matters more than seniority
Something you built end to end that a team still uses today: an internal application, an automation, a tool that changed how people work. Not a prototype, not a demo
Genuine fluency with AI tools. You've shipped with them, not just explored them, and you can name where they failed you and how you caught it
Strong SQL and enough data modeling to work in an existing warehouse and ship a model when the job calls for it
The ability to take a vague problem from a non-technical stakeholder and come back with the right scope, not the requested one
Low ego, high output. You do the unglamorous rollout work because that's what makes the build matter
Have built internal tooling at a company where the hard part was getting hundreds of people to change how they work
Come out of forward deployed or solutions engineering at an AI or developer tools company, where the job was making software work inside someone else's mess
Know N8N, Zapier, or similar deeply enough to have a view on when not to reach for them
Have built in government, healthcare, or another environment where getting it wrong has consequences
Health & Insurance
100% coverage across the board: medical through Oxford/United (Gold and Platinum PPO plans), dental through Guardian PPO, and vision through Beam — all fully covered for employees, with 100% coverage for dependents.
$100,000 in fully paid life insurance. FSA and Dependent Care FSA.
One Medical membership, on us — same-day primary care, 24/7 virtual visits, and offices all over the city.
Fertility and family-building support through Carrot.
401(k) through Guideline, with a 2% company match.
Family & Time Off
16 weeks of fully paid parental leave for birthing parents. 10 weeks fully paid for non-birthing parents.
Unlimited PTO, with a two-week minimum (we mean it when we say take time off!)
Closed for all federal holidays.
Company-wide winter break the week of Christmas.
Company offsites throughout the year.
Office & Remote Setup
Up to $750 one-time home office or desk setup stipend for NYC-based employees. $500 for remote employees.
$50/month commuter benefit (company contribution).
Expensed lunch while in the office.
Company-provided laptop of your choice.
Wellness
Fully covered gym membership at Grindhouse — right across the street from our office at 47 W 17th St (and in Williamsburg). A $225/month value, on us. For remote employees, $100/month dedicated to gym or physical fitness reimbursement.
Stipends
$100/month utility stipend.
$500/year professional development.
$250/year recreation.
$300/quarter pet care stipend.
Government technology has failed citizens, public servants, and service members for decades.
Kaizen powers America’s application layer. We replace the legacy systems federal agencies run on with modern software, built with craft. The ticketing platform a resident uses to visit a presidential library. The marketplace DoW uses for counter-drone procurement to protect lives and critical infrastructure. The system a Veteran uses to access benefits. We build systems of record, of national consequence. Our AI-native modules and harness allow us to do so in weeks and months, not years.
This year, our revenue has grown 35x. Next year, our software will serve over 100 million Americans across dozens of federal agencies.
Founded in 2022 and based in New York City and DC, Kaizen has raised $35 million from NEA, a16z, Accel, 776, and Carpenter Capital.
This is Kaizen's first dedicated events hire, and it's a build role. Our events have been run part time alongside other responsibilities. We have a conference presence, a set of shows we return to, and a handful of rooms that have worked well, but no owner and no playbook. You'll set the strategy, own the calendar and the budget, and be accountable for what the program produces.
The center of the role is the federal conference circuit: the Washington-area shows and agency-facing conferences where our federal buyers gather, the field motion that surrounds them, and the executive dinners and briefings we run alongside them. State and municipal events sit underneath the federal calendar rather than beside it. Kaizen-hosted events are a real ambition and you'll scope what we should own, but that work follows the circuit rather than leading it.
Events at Kaizen are a growth function, measured against pipeline and qualified meetings rather than attendance. Our buyers are public servants, and how we show up in a room is a direct statement about the quality of what we build. Politics is not a criterion at Kaizen: we don't screen for ideology, and we expect you to build trusted relationships on both sides of the aisle.
This is a hybrid role based out of our New York City HQ or our DC office. Candidates must reside in New York or DC, or be able to commute to New York City or DC to work out of our office at least three times a week (Tuesdays - Thursdays).
You've built an events program rather than inherited one, owning the strategy, the budget, the vendor bench, and the measurement
You know the federal conference landscape, or you'll learn it quickly, and you can tell a show that draws program offices and CIOs from one that only draws vendors
You have strong taste and can defend it. You've walked a venue and known it was wrong, and you've ended a sponsorship everyone assumed would renew
You think in pipeline rather than attendance, and you've defended an events budget with something more rigorous than photos and a headcount
You're comfortable in the operational detail: shipping, badge scans, AV failures, staffing, and the seating chart that determines whether a dinner works
You're credible with senior government audiences, from a two-star Army general to an agency CIO to a contracting officer
You manage vendors, agencies, and production partners by directing their output rather than depending on it
You thrive with high autonomy in ambiguous, fast-moving environments, and you self-generate the agenda rather than waiting for one
You're AI-pilled and default to these tools in your daily workflows
You're emotionally intelligent, thoughtful, and empathetic toward public sector missions
Own Kaizen's events strategy end-to-end. Build and run the annual calendar, anchored to the federal buying year: fiscal year-end, agency budget windows, and the conferences where our buyers actually show up
Decide where Kaizen shows up and where it doesn't. Evaluate conferences and sponsorships, negotiate levels and booth placement with organizers, and be willing to walk away. A defensible no matters as much as a good yes
Own our physical presence. Booth design, demo staging, collateral, and swag that match the caliber of the product, along with the vendors and production partners who build them
Run the field motion alongside sales. Account targeting, pre-event outreach, on-site meeting scheduling, team travel and staffing, and the follow-up that determines whether the show produced anything
Own the satellite program around major shows. Executive dinners, agency roundtables, and closed-door briefings, most of them in Washington, where the highest-value conversations often happen off the show floor
Land Kaizen leadership on stage and in the content. Speaker placement, panel submissions, and awards in partnership with Brand & Storytelling and Government Affairs, with photo, video, and customer story capture planned into the run-of-show
Scope and build Kaizen-hosted events. Define what we should own, whether a summit, a dinner series, or a recurring briefing, and determine whether we host it outright or co-host with a govtech company, consulting firm, or systems integrator
Own the budget and the reporting. Manage spend and tradeoffs across the program, and build reporting with BizOps that ties events to pipeline, qualified meetings, and cost per meeting
Navigate federal ethics rules. Gift and hospitality limits vary by agency and shift again at the state and local level. Work with Legal to design programs that are both generous and compliant
4-10 years in events, experiential marketing, or field marketing, with direct ownership of strategy and budget rather than execution alone
Demonstrated experience owning a conference circuit: which shows to commit to, what a sponsorship is worth, how a booth gets built, and how the week runs
Experience running events for federal or public sector buyers is a significant advantage, as are relationships with the Washington venues, producers, and association organizers who make things happen
Experience partnering with sales on targeting and follow-up, and comfort being measured against pipeline
Experience producing owned events such as dinners, roundtables, and summits alongside conference work
Excellent written and verbal communication; comfortable drafting invitations, event briefs, run-of-show documents, and executive prep for senior audiences
Sound judgment under time pressure and public visibility
Health & Insurance
100% coverage across the board: medical through Oxford/United (Gold and Platinum PPO plans), dental through Guardian PPO, and vision through Beam — all fully covered for employees, with 100% coverage for dependents.
$100,000 in fully paid life insurance. FSA and Dependent Care FSA.
One Medical membership, on us — same-day primary care, 24/7 virtual visits, and offices all over the city.
Fertility and family-building support through Carrot.
401(k) through Guideline, with a 2% company match.
Family & Time Off
16 weeks of fully paid parental leave for birthing parents. 10 weeks fully paid for non-birthing parents.
Unlimited PTO, with a two-week minimum (we mean it when we say take time off!)
Closed for all federal holidays.
Company-wide winter break the week of Christmas.
Company offsites throughout the year.
Office & Remote Setup
Up to $750 one-time home office or desk setup stipend for NYC-based employees. $500 for remote employees.
$50/month commuter benefit (company contribution).
Expensed lunch while in the office.
Company-provided laptop of your choice.
Wellness
Fully covered gym membership at Grindhouse — right across the street from our office at 47 W 17th St (and in Williamsburg). A $225/month value, on us. For remote employees, $100/month dedicated to gym or physical fitness reimbursement.
Stipends
$100/month utility stipend.
$500/year professional development.
$250/year recreation.
$300/quarter pet care stipend.
Government technology has failed citizens, public servants, and service members for decades.
Kaizen powers America’s application layer. We replace the legacy systems federal agencies run on with modern software, built with craft. The ticketing platform a resident uses to visit a presidential library. The marketplace DoW uses for counter-drone procurement to protect lives and critical infrastructure. The system a Veteran uses to access benefits. We build systems of record, of national consequence. Our AI-native modules and harness allow us to do so in weeks and months, not years.
This year, our revenue has grown 35x. Next year, our software will serve over 100 million Americans across dozens of federal agencies.
Founded in 2022 and based in New York City and DC, Kaizen has raised $35 million from NEA, a16z, Accel, 776, and Carpenter Capital.
Kaizen has a classified pipeline, a DD-254 in motion, and an FCL application that needs to get started. This is the company's first in-house FSO, with a mandate to stand up the NISP from scratch.
This role sits within Business Operations and Corporate Affairs. You'll work alongside the Security Compliance Program Manage and Contracts Manager. You own the NISP, the classified program, and the cleared workforce. The broader compliance and technical security work belongs to your counterparts.
Based in Washington DC or NYC, hybrid structure, working from our office Tuesday-Thursday.
Drive Kaizen's FCL application through DCSA assessment from day one. Serve as the primary government interface through designation, assessment, and approval, and be ready to move the moment the DD-254 is issued.
Sponsor and transfer existing cleared personnel onto Kaizen's facility clearance immediately upon FCL approval, then manage an active clearance pipeline for an initial cohort of 20 staff.
Build Kaizen's NISP program from scratch: security procedures, self-inspection cadence, insider threat program, visitor authorizations, and classified material controls (storage, transmission, destruction, and accountability).
Support BD and Proposals with security inputs to RFPs, BAAs, and contract security classification specifications (DD-254s). Review PWS/SOWs for security requirements and ensure properly executed DD Form 254s.
Manage SF-312 non-disclosure agreements for all cleared personnel.
Conduct all required security education and awareness: initial briefings, debriefings, annual refresher training, and foreign contact and travel requirements for cleared personnel.
Own FOCI documentation and reporting in coordination with legal, given Kaizen's venture and LP investor structure.
Lead the accreditation of Kaizen's future SCIF per ICD 705, from construction coordination through formal approval.
Work cross-functionally with Business Ops, Engineering, HR, and Legal to embed security requirements into hiring, contracting, and operations.
An active TS/SCI clearance.
Prior experience standing up a NISP program from scratch, including filing an initial FCL package and working directly with DCSA through the assessment process, not inheriting a program someone else built.
Hands-on experience opening and accrediting a SCIF per ICD 705 standards, from coordination through formal CSA approval.
FOCI experience, including SF-328 filings and working through venture or LP investor disclosure requirements.
Deep NISPOM fluency. Can build an audit-ready program and knows what a self-inspection should surface.
DCSA Facility Program Management certification for Possessing Facilities, or willingness to complete it within the first 90 days of designation.
Comfortable operating without a playbook. Builds structure as they go without waiting for direction.
Familiar with CMMC and the DoD controlled information environment Kaizen is building toward.
Have FSO experience at a startup or small defense tech company rather than solely at large primes where someone else ran the actual NISP mechanics.
Have managed clearance pipelines across both defense and civilian federal agency contexts
You have only ever maintained a NISP program someone else built. This role requires standing one up (FCL application, DCSA relationship, program infrastructure) from nothing.
You need a structured environment and a defined playbook. The FSO is the one building it.
The federal mission doesn't interest you. That's a mismatch for this role.
You are not comfortable being a team of one while the organization around you grows. There is no security staff to hand work to. You build it, you run it, you own it.
If you want to build Kaizen's cleared enterprise from the ground up, at a company winning real federal work across defense and civilian agencies, reach out!
Health & Insurance
100% coverage across the board: medical through Oxford/United (Gold and Platinum PPO plans), dental through Guardian PPO, and vision through Beam — all fully covered for employees, with 100% coverage for dependents.
$100,000 in fully paid life insurance. FSA and Dependent Care FSA.
One Medical membership, on us — same-day primary care, 24/7 virtual visits, and offices all over the city.
Fertility and family-building support through Carrot.
401(k) through Guideline, with a 2% company match.
Family & Time Off
16 weeks of fully paid parental leave for birthing parents. 10 weeks fully paid for non-birthing parents.
Unlimited PTO, with a two-week minimum (we mean it when we say take time off!)
Closed for all federal holidays.
Company-wide winter break the week of Christmas.
Company offsites throughout the year.
Office & Remote Setup
Up to $750 one-time home office or desk setup stipend for NYC-based employees. $500 for remote employees.
$50/month commuter benefit (company contribution).
Expensed lunch while in the office.
Company-provided laptop of your choice.
Wellness
Fully covered gym membership at Grindhouse — right across the street from our office at 47 W 17th St (and in Williamsburg). A $225/month value, on us. For remote employees, $100/month dedicated to gym or physical fitness reimbursement.
Stipends
$100/month utility stipend.
$500/year professional development.
$250/year recreation.
$300/quarter pet care stipend.
Government technology has failed citizens, public servants, and service members for decades.
Kaizen powers America’s application layer. We replace the legacy systems federal agencies run on with modern software, built with craft. The ticketing platform a resident uses to visit a presidential library. The marketplace DoW uses for counter-drone procurement to protect lives and critical infrastructure. The system a Veteran uses to access benefits. We build systems of record, of national consequence. Our AI-native modules and harness allow us to do so in weeks and months, not years.
This year, our revenue has grown 35x. Next year, our software will serve over 100 million Americans across dozens of federal agencies.
Founded in 2022 and based in New York City and DC, Kaizen has raised $35 million from NEA, a16z, Accel, 776, and Carpenter Capital.
Federal software companies run on contracts, and most manage compliance through a mix of inboxes, spreadsheets, and hope. Kaizen holds work across civilian agencies and DoD: FAR-based, subcontracts, IDIQ vehicles, BPAs, DoW agreements. Training deadlines, labor postings, OCI requirements, VETS filings - this role builds the function that keeps all of it current. It's the first contracts hire at Kaizen, reporting to the Head of Business Operations & Corporate Affairs and working daily with IT, security, the FSO, and the deployment team.
The BD team brings you deals in progress. You advise on structure, flag compliance risks, help with pricing justification, and get it to signature. Turnaround is hours, not days. If a standard teaming agreement takes you a week, this isn't the right seat. You work with outside counsel on interpretation when needed, but the turnaround is yours to own.
Build and own the obligation register across every federal agreement, keeping it current through mods and change orders
Run the compliance calendar: training certificates back to the AOR, required notices and postings, annual filings including VETS-4212A
Make applicability calls on thresholds, commercial-item carve-outs, and what actually applies at our size
Administer federal portals: SAM reps and certs, PIEE and WAWF for invoicing
Review flowdowns on new subcontracts and agreements before signature and flag what we'd be taking on
Onboard new subcontractors: program context, systems access, security requirements, and operating expectations; hold them to committed scope, timelines, and deliverables
Route execution to People Ops, IT, and security and hold the map of who owns what
Serve as the primary interface with government COs and AOs on active contracts
Support BD and capture teams with contract strategy, pricing input, and T&C risk assessment on proposals
Manage clause interpretation with outside counsel
5+ years of federal contracts or subcontracts administration on the contractor side, where the follow-through was yours
FAR and DFARS fluency, including flowdown matrices and applicability thresholds
You've built a compliance register or calendar, not just worked from one someone else built
DoD contract experience, including FAR-based awards or other transaction agreements
GSA Schedule administration: catalog maintenance, pricing justifications, BPA setup and updates, SIN and SKU modifications, option year reporting, and price reduction clause compliance
Direct submissions into federal systems: SAM, PIEE or WAWF
Comfortable on a small team with no department behind you, able to assign your own week
Experience managing subcontractors or teaming partners against committed scope, milestones, and deliverables, including escalating when they slip
Negotiation experience on federal contracts, not just post-award administration
Familiar with data rights and IP provisions in federal software contracts
Eligible to work with CUI
Primed on subcontracts with flowdown obligations
Managed relationships with major defense prime subcontractors
Managed subcontractors delivering software, data, or AI capabilities
Hold an NCMA certification
Carry an active or recently lapsed clearance
Your contracts background is commercial. The federal compliance context here is the whole job.
You want to write policy rather than close obligations.
You need a system to step into. There isn't one yet.
You want the security and technical compliance work. That lives on a different team.
The agencies Kaizen serves run essential public services. The obligations matter.
If you want to build the compliance infrastructure behind software that reaches tens of millions of Americans, reach out!
Health & Insurance
100% coverage across the board: medical through Oxford/United (Gold and Platinum PPO plans), dental through Guardian PPO, and vision through Beam — all fully covered for employees, with 100% coverage for dependents.
$100,000 in fully paid life insurance. FSA and Dependent Care FSA.
One Medical membership, on us — same-day primary care, 24/7 virtual visits, and offices all over the city.
Fertility and family-building support through Carrot.
401(k) through Guideline, with a 2% company match.
Family & Time Off
16 weeks of fully paid parental leave for birthing parents. 10 weeks fully paid for non-birthing parents.
Unlimited PTO, with a two-week minimum (we mean it when we say take time off!)
Closed for all federal holidays.
Company-wide winter break the week of Christmas.
Company offsites throughout the year.
Office & Remote Setup
Up to $750 one-time home office or desk setup stipend for NYC-based employees. $500 for remote employees.
$50/month commuter benefit (company contribution).
Expensed lunch while in the office.
Company-provided laptop of your choice.
Wellness
Fully covered gym membership at Grindhouse — right across the street from our office at 47 W 17th St (and in Williamsburg). A $225/month value, on us. For remote employees, $100/month dedicated to gym or physical fitness reimbursement.
Stipends
$100/month utility stipend.
$500/year professional development.
$250/year recreation.
$300/quarter pet care stipend.
Government technology has failed citizens, public servants, and service members for decades.
Kaizen powers America’s application layer. We replace the legacy systems federal agencies run on with modern software, built with craft. The ticketing platform a resident uses to visit a presidential library. The marketplace DoW uses for counter-drone procurement to protect lives and critical infrastructure. The system a Veteran uses to access benefits. We build systems of record, of national consequence. Our AI-native modules and harness allow us to do so in weeks and months, not years.
This year, our revenue has grown 35x. Next year, our software will serve over 100 million Americans across dozens of federal agencies.
Founded in 2022 and based in New York City and DC, Kaizen has raised $35 million from NEA, a16z, Accel, 776, and Carpenter Capital.
This role requires an active Top Secret or TS/SCI clearance. United States citizenship is required, because it is a condition of eligibility for the clearance the role depends on.
Most government software was built for compliance, not for the people who use it. Kaizen is changing that, and the engineers who work here are the reason it's possible. At the senior level, this role carries more than code: you're shaping how AI-native features get designed, scoped, and shipped across a platform that millions of Americans touch when they need something from their government. You'll be one of a small number of engineers with direct influence over what gets built and how: setting technical direction, mentoring teammates, and driving decisions that stick.
This is a hybrid role based out of our New York or DC. Candidates must reside in New York or DC or be able to commute to New York City or DC to work out of our office at least three times a week (Tuesdays - Thursdays).
Architect and ship full-stack features end-to-end, from scoping and technical design through build, iteration, and production
Build and integrate against the Palantir stack: Foundry ontologies and pipelines, AIP agents, and Maven Smart System workflows
Build inside classification and data-handling constraints rather than around them
Lead the development of AI-powered product surfaces: intelligent intake flows, real-time constituent assistants, automated case routing, agency operator dashboards
Set technical direction and raise the bar on code quality. Your decisions become the patterns the rest of the team builds on
Engage directly with federal agency stakeholders to translate messy real-world requirements into clean, shippable product
Own platform reliability and performance at government scale: real SLAs, real users, no abstraction layer between you and accountability
Mentor earlier-career engineers through code review, pairing, and direct technical feedback
3+ years of professional engineering experience, with a track record of owning complex features and systems, not just executing on them
Hands-on development experience with Palantir Foundry, AIP, or Maven Smart System. You have modeled against the ontology, shipped pipelines or AIP agents, and can say what the platform does well and where you had to work around it
Deep fluency in React / Next.js and Node.js / TypeScript / Postgres. Fast, not just functional
AI coding tools (Cursor, Copilot, Claude) are already baked into how you work. You've shipped with them, and you move measurably faster because of it
You've built something real: a product, an open source project, a system you designed and stood behind
Proven ability to operate in ambiguity: you define the problem as often as you solve it, and you don't stall waiting for the answer to come to you
A genuine orientation toward the end user, the person on the other side of the screen isn't an abstraction to you
Have shipped software inside a classified or otherwise accredited environment, and know where the real friction lives
Have been a Forward Deployed Engineer, or worked a program where Palantir was prime and you were the one making the integration actually work
Have touched federal, state, or local government tech, or have built in other regulated, high-stakes environments where the constraints were real
Have cloud deployment depth: AWS, Vercel, GitHub Actions, ECS/Fargate
Have experience with design systems and component libraries and a clear opinion on when a component is right vs. just functional
Have led technical work in an early-stage environment where the job was figuring it out, not following a playbook
Health & Insurance
100% coverage across the board: medical through Oxford/United (Gold and Platinum PPO plans), dental through Guardian PPO, and vision through Beam — all fully covered for employees, with 100% coverage for dependents.
$100,000 in fully paid life insurance. FSA and Dependent Care FSA.
One Medical membership, on us — same-day primary care, 24/7 virtual visits, and offices all over the city.
Fertility and family-building support through Carrot.
401(k) through Guideline, with a 2% company match.
Family & Time Off
16 weeks of fully paid parental leave for birthing parents. 10 weeks fully paid for non-birthing parents.
Unlimited PTO, with a two-week minimum (we mean it when we say take time off!)
Closed for all federal holidays.
Company-wide winter break the week of Christmas.
Company offsites throughout the year.
Office & Remote Setup
Up to $750 one-time home office or desk setup stipend for NYC-based employees. $500 for remote employees.
$50/month commuter benefit (company contribution).
Expensed lunch while in the office.
Company-provided laptop of your choice.
Wellness
Fully covered gym membership at Grindhouse — right across the street from our office at 47 W 17th St (and in Williamsburg). A $225/month value, on us. For remote employees, $100/month dedicated to gym or physical fitness reimbursement.
Stipends
$100/month utility stipend.
$500/year professional development.
$250/year recreation.
$300/quarter pet care stipend.
Government technology has failed citizens, public servants, and service members for decades.
Kaizen powers America’s application layer. We replace the legacy systems federal agencies run on with modern software, built with craft. The ticketing platform a resident uses to visit a presidential library. The marketplace DoW uses for counter-drone procurement to protect lives and critical infrastructure. The system a Veteran uses to access benefits. We build systems of record, of national consequence. Our AI-native modules and harness allow us to do so in weeks and months, not years.
This year, our revenue has grown 35x. Next year, our software will serve over 100 million Americans across dozens of federal agencies.
Founded in 2022 and based in New York City and DC, Kaizen has raised $35 million from NEA, a16z, Accel, 776, and Carpenter Capital.
This role requires an active Top Secret or TS/SCI clearance. United States citizenship is required, because it is a condition of eligibility for the clearance the role depends on.
This is a hybrid role based out DC. Candidates must reside in DC or be able to commute to work out of our office at least three times a week (Tuesdays - Thursdays).
You'll own the full implementation journey for Kaizen's federal customers: scoping the rollout, configuring the platform, training agency staff, and staying in the room until the deployment is actually adopted, not just launched. You'll work inside classified and accredited environments where every integration decision has to account for what data can move where, and you'll partner closely with the engineering team to make sure what gets shipped actually fits how the agency operates.
Own end-to-end federal implementations: discovery, scoping, configuration, data migration, integrations, training, go-live, and post-launch support.
Lead onboarding for agency stakeholders and career staff, translating what they actually need into a rollout plan that survives contact with a live agency.
Work inside classification and data-handling constraints as a design input, not an obstacle, coordinating closely with engineering on what can be built and how.
Translate patterns from the field back to Product and Engineering: edge cases, workflow gaps, and the things agencies never put in the RFP but need on day one.
Act as the connective tissue between customer-facing implementation and the engineers building against Foundry, AIP, and Maven Smart System, so what ships matches what was promised.
Build the playbooks, templates, and internal documentation that make the next federal deployment faster than this one.
Guide public sector partners through the actual change management of replacing a legacy system, not just the technical cutover.
5+ years in SaaS implementation, onboarding, solutions engineering, or a product-adjacent delivery role (Implementation Consultant, Solutions Architect, Technical Program Manager), with a track record of owning multi-stakeholder rollouts.
Technical fluency: comfortable working with APIs, data models, and system configurations, and able to hold your own in a conversation with engineers about integration tradeoffs.
Experience translating customer requirements into implementation plans and technical workflows, not just a status tracker.
Comfort operating inside classified or otherwise accredited environments, or a clear ability to pick up new compliance and data-handling constraints fast.
A bias toward action: you'd rather build the process while running the deployment than wait for someone to hand you one.
Have deployed software inside a classified or accredited environment before and know where the real friction lives.
Have worked a program where Palantir was prime, or have hands-on exposure to Foundry, AIP, or Maven Smart System.
Have touched federal, state, or local government implementation work specifically, versus enterprise SaaS generally.
Have built implementation playbooks or internal tooling from scratch at an early-stage company.
You need a mature playbook to follow. Most of what you'll use here, you'll be building.
You want to hand off the hard technical questions to engineering and stay on the process side. This role lives at that intersection.
You're looking for a steady-state customer success role. This is deployment under real constraints, with real agencies, and real consequences if it goes wrong.
Government bureaucracy and slow-moving stakeholders would wear you down instead of something you know how to work with.
Health & Insurance
100% coverage across the board: medical through Oxford/United (Gold and Platinum PPO plans), dental through Guardian PPO, and vision through Beam — all fully covered for employees, with 100% coverage for dependents.
$100,000 in fully paid life insurance. FSA and Dependent Care FSA.
One Medical membership, on us — same-day primary care, 24/7 virtual visits, and offices all over the city.
Fertility and family-building support through Carrot.
401(k) through Guideline, with a 2% company match.
Family & Time Off
16 weeks of fully paid parental leave for birthing parents. 10 weeks fully paid for non-birthing parents.
Unlimited PTO, with a two-week minimum (we mean it when we say take time off!)
Closed for all federal holidays.
Company-wide winter break the week of Christmas.
Company offsites throughout the year.
Office & Remote Setup
Up to $750 one-time home office or desk setup stipend for NYC-based employees. $500 for remote employees.
$50/month commuter benefit (company contribution).
Expensed lunch while in the office.
Company-provided laptop of your choice.
Wellness
Fully covered gym membership at Grindhouse — right across the street from our office at 47 W 17th St (and in Williamsburg). A $225/month value, on us. For remote employees, $100/month dedicated to gym or physical fitness reimbursement.
Stipends
$100/month utility stipend.
$500/year professional development.
$250/year recreation.
$300/quarter pet care stipend.