Founding Product Engineer - Lithos

As a Founding Product Engineer at Lithos, you’ll join as the first hire on the Engineering team and work directly with our Head of Engineering to build the operating system for one of the largest carbon dioxide removal efforts in history.

How does software play a role? Carbon removal is a mass transfer problem. We need to create an entirely new industry capable of removing tens of billions of tons of CO2 — the same order of magnitude as humanity’s entire global production of food, or concrete, and to do all this within the next decade. 

Our bet: the best chance of success is by leveraging three industries already capable of this scale: agriculture , mining , and transportation . But just having the physical and human infrastructure is not enough.

At Lithos, we’re building the operating system to plan, orchestrate, track, and optimize enhanced rock weathering. You'll combine deep full-stack technical skills with empathy and design thinking to build and scale our interconnected platform. Some examples of the diverse challenges you might work on:

• Interactive geospatial tools for mapping, analysis, and optimization
• Creative automated and human-in-the-loop workflows for digitizing PDF maps and records
• Pipelines for ingesting, converting, and analyzing raw data logs from agricultural machinery
• Audit-ready representation, tracking and reconciliation of an array of real-world activities
• Laboratory information management systems (LIMS) for tens of thousands of field samples

About Lithos

Lithos Carbon revolutionizes the carbon capture industry through enhanced rock weathering technology. We work with farmers to spread basalt rock on farmland, which increases soil health and repurposes post-industrial waste. Our technology is aimed at removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at a fraction of the cost of other methods, while helping farmers improve crop yields. Our team is made up of industry-leading academic scientists and proven entrepreneurs, and we are backed by top-tier investors like Union Square Ventures and Greylock Partners. We started commercializing the technology in 2022 and already signed customers for our permanent carbon removal credits including Stripe, Alphabet, Shopify, and McKinsey’s Frontier program. You can read about our work in FastCompany, Axios, and on our blog.

Requirements

You might thrive in this role if:

• You have experience shipping production features from beginning to end in a fast-paced, early-stage environment. We're flexible on your background, but candidates without mid-senior engineering experience are not likely to be a fit.
• You are fluent in modern web development across the full stack and have experience with technologies similar to our current stack (React, Typescript, Hasura + Apollo GraphQL, XState, and Postgres/PostGIS/SQL). We expect successful candidates will be able to rapidly pick up a new language or technology from first principles rather than look for YoE in a particular language or tool.
• You have excellent communication skills and are comfortable operating in a highly ambiguous environment. You’re capable of operating independently and are able to scope your work and collaborate with both internal and external stakeholders to achieve business goals without tight supervision.
• You are comfortable balancing scrappy and relentlessly resourceful solutions while recognizing key areas for longer-term investment. You have an opinion for when to take on tech debt and when to pay it down.

Domain areas:

Below are some relevant topics for this role, but we don't require existing experience. We're lifelong learners at Lithos: success here means the ability and enthusiasm to acquire deep expertise in new areas.

• Geospatial data and GIS (e.g. platforms like Mapbox, QGIS, and PostGIS; GPS data capture software/hardware)
• Farm management software (FMS/FMIS) like John Deere Operations Center, Trimble Ag, or Ag Leader SMS
• Commercial agriculture: farm machinery + operations, soil sampling and nutrient management practices
• Physical/laboratory measurement workflows (LIMS) and handling data with uncertainty

Benefits

• Competitive salary and meaningful equity compensation
• Comprehensive health coverage including medical, dental, and vision
• Access to our 401k plan
• Unlimited PTO and sick days

Lithos provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, genetics, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, marital status, pregnancy or related condition, or any other basis protected by law.

To apply, follow the link to complete the application and we will be in touch within 5-7 business days.