About Potpie

Potpie is building the foundation layer for spec-driven development in large, complex codebases. We focus on making software systems understandable, debuggable, and operable through structured context and AI agents.

This is not about incremental code generation. This is about solving how software is built and maintained at scale.

Role

We are looking for an AI Researcher who thinks in systems, writes actively, and is driven to explore unsolved problems in software engineering.

This role is not passive research. You will be expected to produce ideas, test them quickly, and communicate them clearly through writing.

What you will do

Drive research across AI for software engineering, especially in debugging, reasoning, and system understanding
Write consistently. This includes research notes, internal memos, external blogs, and technical breakdowns
Build and experiment with prototypes that test new approaches
Work closely with product and engineering to translate research into usable systems
Explore how structured context, knowledge graphs, and agent workflows improve outcomes
Study and critique existing approaches and push beyond them

What we are looking for

0 - 4 years of experience
Strong ability to think clearly and write clearly. Writing is a core part of the role
Demonstrated research ability. This can be papers, blogs, deep technical explorations, or open source work
Comfort working in ambiguity and forming first-principles views
Ability to move fast from idea to experiment

Bonus

Interest in code graphs, dependency analysis, or program structure
Curiosity about the software development lifecycle (SDLC) beyond just code generation
Experience working on developer tools, compilers, static analysis, or similar systems
Public writing or research presence (blogs, papers, Twitter threads, etc.)

What this role is not

Not a prompt engineering role
Not a pure implementation role
Not limited to reading papers and summarizing

We value people who form opinions, test them, and write about them.

Why this role

You will be working on problems that sit at the intersection of AI and real-world software systems. The goal is not to follow existing playbooks but to define new ones.