Goblins | https://goblinsapp.com | Founding Engineer #3 | Williamsburg, New York | ONSITE | $100-200k (+ generous equity)
At Goblins, we're building America's favorite teacher, starting with K-12 math. We're live in thousands of classrooms for in-class assignments, extra practice, and homework. Students work on a whiteboard while our models analyze their work in real time and nudge them with questions that make them think. Teachers get instant visibility into how the class is doing, who needs help, and what to assign next.
We just raised our seed round and are backed by the Gates Foundation, giving us the ability to build something transformative in education.
Here's what you might work on:
- Create shareable "aha moment" videos from real student sessions.
Turn anonymized whiteboard work and Goblin–student dialogues into short videos or interactive replays that highlight the value of Goblins. Automatically identify the best moments, strip out sensitive data, and produce artifacts that teachers, parents, and districts want to watch and share.
Our Goblin avatars are already in production. Improve audio–motion sync, temporal coherence, and expressiveness, while cutting latency and cost so they run smoothly at 100k+ student scale.
- Extend continuous diagnostics to high-stakes like the SAT and ACT.
We track mastery against state standards with our spin on IRT. Extend this to SAT/ACT-style exams: infer score distributions from behavior, validate on real data, and compute minimal targeted practice that reliably moves predicted scores.
- Design uncheatable problem formats.
Generative AI can solve most traditional math problems and show fake work. Build formats where copying is harder than thinking: dynamic graphs, constructive proofs, counterexample generation, debugging flawed solutions, multi-step conceptual checks. Make them auto-gradable, resistant to copy-paste, and stable at scale.
- Build real-time instructional agents.
Detect underlying student misconceptions from their work and have an agent "drop in" only when needed. It should generate short, visual, 3blue1brown-style explanations tailored to the specific misunderstanding, and create diagrams, animations, and interactive examples that adapt as the student responds.
The role is based in our Williamsburg, Brooklyn office in NYC (on-site only). You'll join our tight-knit founding engineering team of 3—myself (the CTO) and two founding engineers with collective experience from Stanford, Stripe, Amazon, and X1.
As our third founding engineer, you'll have full ownership of critical projects and ship production systems that impact thousands of students and teachers in real classrooms within your first few weeks.
If this sounds fun, and you want to help inspire 1 billion kids to love to learn, email [email protected] :)
Goblins | https://goblinsapp.com | Founding Engineer #3 | Williamsburg, New York | ONSITE | $100-200k (+ generous equity)
In education, we have always traded off scale and quality. In a 30-student math class, half of kids are ready to accelerate while half are still working on their foundational skills, but teachers cannot be in 30 places at once, giving each student one-on-one support.
Until now. Imagine 30 teachers in every classroom—that's how Goblins feels. Students draw math on any device, and our AI figures out the "why" behind their confusion, giving instant feedback and building conceptual foundations. (Try it out here! https://app.goblinsapp.com/onboard)
Goblins launched to school districts in the spring of 2025. Since then we've built a waitlist of thousands of teachers and sold Goblins to districts across the US (we'll hit 100k+ paid students this year!). We are in the unique position of having a product that is both highly differentiated and demanded :)
Technical problems that we find interesting:
→ Building knowledge graphs that adapt to student performance in real-time, routing them to the optimal next problem they should solve to maximize learning and engagement.
→ Extending our handwriting recognition from digital canvas to real paper through Chromebook cameras (think real-time OCR on math equations through low-quality webcams with poor lighting)
→ Creating interactive mathematical lessons (think 3blue1brown, but conversational) that remediate student misconceptions.
You'll be joining founding team members Sawyer (CEO, former Head of Design at X1 [acquired by Robinhood] and math teacher) and Alp (CTO, ex-Stripe and Amazon), plus two other exceptional founding engineers.
We move fast, care deeply about craft, and obsess over delighting users. If you're interested, email [email protected] :)
Goblins | https://goblinsapp.com | Founding Engineer #3 | Williamsburg, New York | ONSITE | $100-200k (+ generous equity)
In education, we have always traded off scale and quality. In a 30-student math class, half of kids are ready to accelerate while half are still working on their foundational skills, but teachers cannot be in 30 places at once, giving each student one-on-one support.
Until now. Imagine 30 teachers in every classroom—that's how Goblins feels. Students draw math on any device, and our AI figures out the "why" behind their confusion, giving instant feedback and building conceptual foundations. (Preview: https://youtu.be/SH9UomzBMUs)
Goblins launched to school districts in the spring of 2025. Since then we've built a waitlist of thousands of teachers and sold Goblins to districts across the US (we'll hit 100k+ paid students this year!). We are in the unique position of having a product that is both highly differentiated and demanded :)
Technical problems we've worked on in the past:
→ Building knowledge graphs that adapt to student performance in real-time, routing them to the optimal next problem they should solve to maximize learning and engagement.
→ Extending our handwriting recognition from digital canvas to real paper through Chromebook cameras (think real-time OCR on math equations through low-quality webcams with poor lighting and limited CPU).
→ Creating interactive mathematical lessons (think 3blue1brown, but conversational) that remediate student misconceptions.
You'll be joining founding team members Sawyer (CEO, former Head of Design at X1 [acquired by Robinhood] and math teacher) and Alp (CTO, ex-Stripe and Amazon), plus two other exceptional founding engineers.
We move fast, care deeply about craft, and obsess over delighting users. If you're interested, email [email protected] :)
Goblins | https://goblinsapp.com | Founding Engineer #2 | Williamsburg, New York | ONSITE | $100-200k (+ generous equity)
In education, we have always traded off scale and quality. In a 30-student math class, half of kids are ready to accelerate while half are still working on their foundational skills, but teachers cannot be in 30 places at once, giving each student one-on-one support.
Until now. Imagine 30 teachers in every classroom—that's how Goblins feels. Students draw math on any device, and our AI figures out the "why" behind their confusion, giving instant feedback and building conceptual foundations. (Preview: https://youtu.be/SH9UomzBMUs)
Goblins launched to a private beta in March with 15 schools and 300 students. Since then we've built a waitlist of 2,300 teachers, and we now have paid school and district customers across the US and Mexico. We've also raised from angels and received a large grant from the Gates Foundation.
We are in the unique position of having a product that is both highly differentiated and demanded. Anyone who joins now will be getting well-priced equity. By the end of this school year, this company will be much larger.
Current technical problems we're working on:
→ Building knowledge graphs that adapt to student performance in real-time, routing them to the optimal next problem to work on
→ Extending our handwriting recognition from digital canvas to real paper through Chromebook cameras (think real-time OCR on math equations through low-quality webcams with poor lighting and limited CPU)
→ Creating interactive mathematical lessons (think 3blue1brown, but conversational) that remediate student misconceptions
You'll be engineer #2 on the team, joining Sawyer (CEO, former Head of Design at X1, acquired by Robinhood, and math teacher) and Alp (CTO, previously Stripe and Amazon).
We move fast, care deeply about craft, and obsess over delighting users. If you're interested, email [email protected] :)
Goblins | https://goblinsapp.com | Founding Engineer #2 | Williamsburg, New York | ONSITE | $60-160k (+ 0.75-2.5%)
In education, we have always traded off scale and quality. In a 30-student math class, half of kids are ready to accelerate while half are still working on their foundational skills, but teachers cannot be in 30 places at once, giving each student one-on-one support.
Until now. Imagine 30 teachers in every classroom—that's how Goblins feels. Students draw math on any device, and our AI figures out the "why" behind their confusion, giving instant feedback and building conceptual foundations. (Preview: https://youtu.be/SH9UomzBMUs)
Goblins launched to a private beta in March with 15 schools and 300 students. Since then we've built a waitlist of 2,300 teachers, and we now have paid school and district customers across the US and Mexico. We've also raised from angels and received a large grant from the Gates Foundation.
We are in the unique position of having a product that is both highly differentiated and demanded. Anyone who joins now will be getting well-priced equity. By the end of this school year, this company will be much larger.
Current technical problems we're working on:
→ Building knowledge graphs that adapt to student performance in real-time, routing them to the optimal next problem to work on
→ Extending our handwriting recognition from digital canvas to real paper through Chromebook cameras (think real-time OCR on math equations through low-quality webcams with poor lighting and limited CPU)
→ Creating interactive mathematical lessons (think 3blue1brown, but conversational) that remediate student misconceptions
You'll be engineer #2 on the team, joining Sawyer (CEO, former Head of Design at X1, acquired by Robinhood, and math teacher) and Alp (CTO, previously Stripe and Amazon).
We move fast, care deeply about craft, and obsess over delighting users. If you're interested, email [email protected] :)
At Goblins, we're building America's favorite teacher, starting with K-12 math. We're live in thousands of classrooms for in-class assignments, extra practice, and homework. Students work on a whiteboard while our models analyze their work in real time and nudge them with questions that make them think. Teachers get instant visibility into how the class is doing, who needs help, and what to assign next.
We just raised our seed round and are backed by the Gates Foundation, giving us the ability to build something transformative in education.
Here's what you might work on:
- Create shareable "aha moment" videos from real student sessions.
Turn anonymized whiteboard work and Goblin–student dialogues into short videos or interactive replays that highlight the value of Goblins. Automatically identify the best moments, strip out sensitive data, and produce artifacts that teachers, parents, and districts want to watch and share.
- Rewrite our diffusion transformer real-time avatar stack.
Our Goblin avatars are already in production. Improve audio–motion sync, temporal coherence, and expressiveness, while cutting latency and cost so they run smoothly at 100k+ student scale.
- Extend continuous diagnostics to high-stakes like the SAT and ACT.
We track mastery against state standards with our spin on IRT. Extend this to SAT/ACT-style exams: infer score distributions from behavior, validate on real data, and compute minimal targeted practice that reliably moves predicted scores.
- Design uncheatable problem formats.
Generative AI can solve most traditional math problems and show fake work. Build formats where copying is harder than thinking: dynamic graphs, constructive proofs, counterexample generation, debugging flawed solutions, multi-step conceptual checks. Make them auto-gradable, resistant to copy-paste, and stable at scale.
- Build real-time instructional agents.
Detect underlying student misconceptions from their work and have an agent "drop in" only when needed. It should generate short, visual, 3blue1brown-style explanations tailored to the specific misunderstanding, and create diagrams, animations, and interactive examples that adapt as the student responds.
The role is based in our Williamsburg, Brooklyn office in NYC (on-site only). You'll join our tight-knit founding engineering team of 3—myself (the CTO) and two founding engineers with collective experience from Stanford, Stripe, Amazon, and X1.
As our third founding engineer, you'll have full ownership of critical projects and ship production systems that impact thousands of students and teachers in real classrooms within your first few weeks.
If this sounds fun, and you want to help inspire 1 billion kids to love to learn, email [email protected] :)