Last month, we announced Holly's $2.2M pre-seed funding to transform how millions of Americans find meaningful careers in public service. Today, we're excited to share another milestone: we're hiring a founding engineer to help build this future.

The challenge we're tackling is massive: 1 million vacant government jobs, 135-day hiring cycles, and $85B in annual overtime costs. But more importantly, these numbers represent real impact on communities – delayed permits, reduced park maintenance, slower emergency response times, and countless other essential services that touch people's lives daily.

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We're looking for a founding engineer who will be crucial in building the systems that help solve this. This person will:

• Architect and build the data systems powering our AI-driven hiring platform
• Design scalable infrastructure serving hundreds of local governments
• Develop LLM pipelines that transform unstructured government data into actionable insights
• Shape our engineering culture and technical decisions from the ground up

But beyond the technical requirements, we're looking for someone who shares our vision that "good enough for government work" should mean the very best. Someone who believes that public servants deserve modern tools that match or exceed what's available in the private sector.

Why This Role Matters

When we started Holly, we made a conscious choice to focus first on job design – using AI to transform how governments create and manage position descriptions. It's a critical pain point where automation can immediately help HR teams work faster and smarter. As city leaders often tell us, "by the time we post the job, we've already lost."

Our founding engineer will be instrumental in building the systems that make this transformation possible. They'll work directly with our early partners, like the City of Long Beach, to understand the nuances of government hiring processes and build solutions that actually work within government's unique requirements while pushing the boundaries of what's possible.

Building with Clear Values

As we shared in our launch post, Holly's core belief is that public servants deserve the highest standards. That means building software that outperforms current public sector tech by a step change, oriented around a deep understanding of public sector needs.

We're looking for someone who resonates with our key principles:

• Leading with trust and transparent communication
• Learning by doing and embracing rapid iteration
• Moving with conviction to build practical solutions

Join Us

If you're an experienced backend engineer excited about using technology for social impact, we'd love to hear from you. The role offers competitive compensation ($140K-$180K + equity) and can be based in Brooklyn or remote within the US.

Reach out to us at jobs@hollygov.com with your resume and a brief note about why this mission excites you.

Here's to building the future of public service,

Brendan and Cherie