Sanctuary Computer: Head of Technology

Culture

They model garden3d's values of partnership, curiosity, and accountability. The engineers they lead do the best work of their careers here, because the feedback is honest, the recognition is earned, and the craft rubs off

 Special Projects

In addition to day to day responsibilities, here’s an idea of some of the projects this role may spearhead or support in coming years →

• Making agentic development the default way Sanctuary Computer builds, with loops and evals the whole team trusts
• Setting the shared technical conventions every garden3d studio builds from
• Landing the kind of flagship engineering engagement that changes what people think we do
• Hiring the next generation of the engineering team, across every garden3d studio
• Turning the internal tools and agents we build for ourselves into products
• Partnering with the Head of Design so our own studio websites are as well engineered as they are designed

Qualifications

This is a great opportunity for someone looking to make a significant impact in a growing, dynamic company. Based on the responsibilities of this role, we think the right candidate has the following experience and skills:

Must have:

• 12+ years building software, at least three of them leading engineers inside a studio, agency, startup or founder-led company
• Deep experience engineering complex systems, shipped and run in production: distributed services, data pipelines, multi-platform products
• A true technology generalist, comfortable across frontend, backend, data, infrastructure and native
• A strong preference for practical engineering: convention over configuration, boring technology, and platforms as a service over bespoke infrastructure
• All in on agentic development: loop engineering, evals, and agents doing real work in a real codebase
• Fluency across most of our stack: React, Next.js, Ruby on Rails, Elixir & Phoenix, Sanity, Postgres, Redis. You won't use all of it every week, but you should be able to review any of it
• Experience as the technical lead in winning work: scoping, estimating and pitching to clients
• A track record of hiring exceptional engineers, and of people who got measurably better working for them
• Hands-on. This person can still write the code, not only review it (and will get on the tools when the need arises)

Nice-to-have:

• A sense of how hardware works: firmware, embedded systems, IoT, and shipping software for physical products
• Experience in a client services environment (a consultancy, agency or studio)
• Experience in a Sales Engineer or Solutions Architect role
• Open source projects they've started or maintained
• Experience fostering close collaboration between design and engineering teams
• Experience inside a worker-owned, open-book, or otherwise unusual company
• A network in the engineering community: the meetups, the conferences, the people worth hiring
• Interests in design, art, music, food or fashion. We find these people have a well rounded sense of quality

Who you are

The person we’re looking for is happy, relaxed and easy to get along with and appreciates a commitment to a culture of transparency, non-dictatorial leadership styles, and alternative methodologies. They’re flexible on anything except conceits that will lower their usually outstanding work quality. They work “smart” by carefully managing their workflow and team.

How we interview

After you submit your application, a member of our team will reach out. Our interview process starts with an intro call to answer any questions you have about the role and to learn a bit more about your experience and interests.

From there, we’ll follow up with a panel interview call where you get to meet a few members of our team, to openly discuss some of our challenges and ensure your skills and interests align with where we’re going as a business.

For qualified candidates, the process wraps with a reference call, and an offer to follow.

Compensation

This is a permanent leadership role. If this individual exceeds expectations in their first four months, we'll shape the permanent role together, with scope and compensation that grow as the studios and their revenue do. After a period of proven success (12 - 24 months), they become eligible to join our worker ownership program.

We start with a 4-month fraction trial contract, paid hourly between $110 - $175 p/hr pending seniority & experience. In the first few weeks of the trial, this individual will propose their own goals to define success in their trial, and present them to our leadership team for approval.

At garden3d, we believe that those who shoulder the most responsibility and create the greatest impact should be paid accordingly. This role greatly favors autonomous, competent & ambitious operators.

‍ How we work:

We believe that there’s a better balance between the poles of freelancing & full time, and for that reason we work differently to most shops:

• Transparency & Ownership: We release out Profit & Loss statements to the community each year, open source our best ideas, and talk business & money with everyone in the company. We’re proud to run our business with integrity, and for that reason we share everything with our team & community.
• 150% Carbon Negative: Our studio offsets 150% of the carbon we use to do business each year, dated back to our founding in 2015. We turn down work that is not in-line with our morals, and we encourage our peers to do the same. We have been certified climate neutral since 2021.
• Strong Morals: Since our founding, we've turned down somewhere between $1mm - $2mm of work that didn't meet our moral standards. (Most of that was DTC brands that can't show a valid sustainability initiative).
• Async & Decentralized: We use tools optimized for calm, thoughtful communication, and opt for async whenever possible. We fight hard to maintain our focus time.
• Remote Friendly: Our company is fluent in remote work, making our workplace more decentralized, and democratized in the process.
• Ideas & Products: In our spare studio time, we work to build our own open source or internal products to diversify & bolster our income. We create amazing technology products for our clients, so why not for the studio?

→ Read more on our Substack, over here.

How to apply

We’re excited to hear from you! ❤

Kindly submit a complete and thoughtful application, including relevant links that help verify your work experience and identity. Applications with missing or insufficient information will not move forward in the review process.

Our team carefully reviews every complete submission, and we truly appreciate the time and effort you put into applying! :)

To apply: