Software Engineer -- AI Agent Operations in New Haven

Job Description

Victory Waves builds the software political campaigns run on — voter lists, canvassing, phonebanking, petition validation, digital ads. Real campaigns use it during real elections, where the deadline is an election day that does not move. Most of our code is now written with AI agents. That changes what an engineer does: you will spend less time typing implementations and more time deciding what to build, directing agents to build it, and verifying that what came back is actually correct. That last part is the job. You would be the first engineering hire, working next to the founder at District in New Haven, in the office Monday through Friday. This role is not remote or hybrid, and that is not a preference we are flexible on — learning to direct AI agents well is caught more than taught, and it happens across a desk. It starts as a 3-month paid contract, then a full-time offer if it works for both of us. We are not filtering on years of experience or where you went to school: a recent CS graduate who is careful and curious will do better here than a senior engineer who trusts output.

Responsibilities

• Direct AI coding agents through real features, then review what they produce
• Verify outputs against reality — not against the agent's summary of itself
• Ship to production for live campaigns and watch what happens
• Work across the stack: TypeScript, React, Next.js, Postgres, some Python
• Talk to the customers using what you built, because there is nobody in between

Required Qualifications

• Verification instinct above everything. Tools lie: a script exits 0 and writes an empty file, a UI says "Success" and nothing happened, an agent reports a test passing that never ran. You check the artifact instead of the success message — reflexively, without being asked
• You can read code well enough to know when it is wrong, even if you did not write it
• You are comfortable being the least experienced person in the room and saying so
• You would rather ship something small today than design something perfect for a month
• Legally able to work in the US (we cannot sponsor visas right now)
• Able to be in our New Haven office five days a week. Please do not apply if you need remote or hybrid — we will not be able to make an exception

Additional Beneficial Experience (Nice-to-Haves)

• A project, a bug you chased, or a thing you fixed that nobody asked you to — send us anything that shows how you think. A resume is fine but it is the least interesting thing you can send
• Hiring process: a conversation about what you have built and what broke, then a paid take-home on a real problem (a few hours, we pay for your time), then the 3-month on-site contract, then a full-time offer and a conversation about equity

Compensation

• Equity: Conversation after the 3-month trial
• Commission: None
• Salary: $50,000 annualized during the 3-month contract; $50,000+ on full-time conversion

About Victory Waves

• Victory Waves is a political-technology company building AI-powered tools that help progressive candidates run modern, data-driven campaigns. Our platform combines rich voter data, intuitive canvassing and outreach tools, and advanced analytics to give small-budget campaigns the same capabilities as well-funded races. From AI-driven voter targeting to mobile canvassing, phone banking, and petition validation, Victory Waves makes campaigning easier, faster, and more effective—empowering candidates committed to strengthening democracy to compete and win. This is a small company: no team to hide inside, no onboarding program, and some weeks are messy. What you get instead is unusual — you will run production systems in your first month, see every part of a business, and get very good at directing AI agents while most engineers are still arguing about whether to.