We work under a written constitution.
Not a values page. An actual document, versioned in the repository, that decides arguments. It is short, it has been amended eleven times, and every amendment came from something breaking. If you would find that suffocating, this is a useful thing to know early.
Read the public claims file before applying →Hosts sleep; ledgers don’t.
Assert the fact, not the residue.
What gates watch stays true; what nothing watches drifts.
Open roles.
One role is genuinely open today. We do not list speculative openings.
remote, GMT ±3 overlap
open now Senior Inference Engineer Owns the gateway’s model-facing layer. Posture: open now. Compensation stated at offer. remote · GMT ±3 overlap · senior, hands-on
the job
Owns the gateway’s model-facing layer: provider routing across the Anthropic, OpenAI-shape, and OpenRouter paths; the Anthropic-to-OpenAI translation layer (buffered today; streaming is the first project); prompt-cache orchestration per provider; the cheap-first cascade and its escalation economics; per-session provider-key resolution; and the execution side of the independent verifier.
first three months
Streaming for the Anthropic-to-OpenAI translation layer. It is buffered today, and this is the first project.
Prompt-cache orchestration per provider, and the cheap-first cascade with its escalation economics.
Per-session provider-key resolution, and the execution side of the independent verifier.
Measure before publishing: resume timing, cache hit rates, and cost per accepted job at real prices.
you probably fit if
You work under the gate law: tests authored before code, a sabotage mode for every gate, and no claim without its record.
You would rather measure resume timing, cache hit rates and cost per accepted job than describe them.
Senior and hands-on.
Security findings go to security@keepstate.ai; general findings to findings@keepstate.ai. Every submission is read by the team. Read our public claims file before applying.
not open Everything else Roles we will genuinely need next, listed so you can tell us when you are the person. Posture: not open. No requisition and no timeline. no requisition · no timeline promised
the job
These are real gaps rather than aspirational openings. We are not interviewing for them and no budget is approved for them, and we would rather say that plainly than collect resumes for a pipeline.
first three months
Virtualization and storage: the freeze itself, from one bench to a fleet. This was posted as an open role and was never funded, so it sits here honestly rather than staying up as a requisition.
Developer experience, when the CLI has more surface than the current team can gate.
A first non-engineering hire, whenever the design partner conversations outgrow engineering.
you probably fit if
You are comfortable with an honest maybe rather than a process.
You would read the claims file for fun.
You do not need a job description to know what you would fix first.
Security findings go to security@keepstate.ai; general findings to findings@keepstate.ai. Every submission is read by the team. Read our public claims file before applying.
Write to us. Tell us what you have built and what you would want to own here. We do not ask candidates to produce unpaid work as an application.
findings@keepstate.ai How the work actually goes.
Four practices, in the order they happen. None of them is optional, and all of them slow the first week down and speed up every week after.
practice 01
Gates before evidence
You write the thing that would catch the failure before you write the thing that might fail. Not tests in the ordinary sense: a gate is a check that runs on every release and whose red state removes a public claim from the website automatically.
costs about a day per feature · buys the ability to say a number out loud
practice 02
ADRs before code
Any decision that would be expensive to reverse gets a short written record first: the options, the one chosen, and what would make us change our minds. Some have since been reversed, which is the point of writing the reversal condition down.
costs an hour · buys not relitigating the same argument in six months
practice 03
Journals between sessions
Work is handed off in writing, including to your own future self. This is the same discipline our product sells: state that survives the process ending. A person who leaves for a week should not take the context with them.
costs ten minutes a day · buys a team that survives a holiday
practice 04
No claim without a tag
Nothing goes on the marketing site, in a deck, or into a customer email unless it cites the gate run that proves it. If the number cannot be gated, it gets softened to an observation, with its scope stated. This has killed several good slides.
costs some marketing punch · buys a claims file competitors cannot copy
Reasons not to join us.
Every company has these. Most make you discover them in month three, which wastes a year of your life and ours.
KeepState builds in the open; every claim on this site links to the gate output that proves it. There is no platform team to hand a problem to, and no design partner will be impressed by your org chart.
The constitution will occasionally tell you no when you are right. The correct move is to amend it in writing, which is slower than being right loudly.
We publish our own defects with dates on them. If having your mistake in a public archive would keep you up at night, this will be uncomfortable.
Compensation at this stage is weighted toward equity, and early equity is a lottery ticket, not a plan. The terms are in writing before you commit anything.
Our own build is governed by the same audit discipline we sell.
Gates before evidence, evidence before claims, no claim without a tag. If that sounds like a good week rather than a burden, we should talk.
keepstate.ai · the durable agent session cloud