- Built complex relational systems from scratch (ERP/MES/Palantir-type)
- Courage, grit, chip on shoulder, urgency
- Build Argos (OS: supply chain, quoting, pricing) from scratch
- Argos Sim: CAD automation, composite DFM, simulation
Tweets, press, and people that show why this team is worth your time.
Helicon is hiring its founding software engineers. Figure out what's really important, understand what gets you 80% of the way, and ship it as fast as possible without burning out. There's essentially no off-the-shelf software for what Helicon does, so you're building from scratch across three surfaces: Argos (the OS orchestrating everything from raw material to finished part — supply chain, quoting, pricing; effectively an ERP + manufacturing execution system, a huge web of interconnected relational tables tying scheduling → a running job → what's in it → how it's made); Argos Sim (CAD automation, DFM for composite parts, mold generation, and simulation to speed design cycles — medium-term, post-training quantized physics/surrogate neural networks that turn week-long simulations into minutes); and factory automation (ingesting real-time telemetry from manufacturing equipment and sensors into a 24/7 digital twin — high-bandwidth data in/out). You build alongside world-class hardware engineers with full autonomy.
This is emphatically hands-on and physical: you'll be told to go to the factory floor, talk to the operators, and figure out how to make their life better. Alex cares far more about how good and how hungry someone is than how experienced — slope over intercept, "you can learn pretty much anything." It runs fast — Alex would compress most timelines candidates quote by ~3–4x — so speed, urgency, and a bias to persuade-and-act over waiting to be told are core.
What You'll Do
- Build Argos from scratch — the OS orchestrating raw material → finished part (supply chain, quoting, pricing); a complex relational ERP/MES
- Build Argos Sim — CAD automation, DFM for composites, mold generation and simulation; medium-term, post-train quantized surrogate/physics models
- Build factory automation — ingest real-time equipment/sensor telemetry into a 24/7 digital twin (high-bandwidth data in/out)
- Own problems end to end; go to the factory floor, talk to operators, and ship the fix
- Make consequential product/architecture decisions with full autonomy alongside hardware engineers
Requirements
- 2+ years shipping production-grade software at scale (FE: TypeScript; BE: Python/Go) Built complex relational systems from scratch — ERPs, MES, logistics networks (the Palantir / AI-native-ERP archetype, e.g., "DOS"-type companies); encoding reality into data so intelligence/agents can run the same flow
- Comfortable building from zero rather than plastering onto an existing tool
- Strong track record of high-quality shipped products
- Bonus: manufacturing processes / automated systems / tooling; CAD, computational geometry, 3D environments; high-bandwidth telemetry; model post-training / quantization
Execution and Ownership
- Owns work end to end, figures shit out, builds — no dedicated PM/QA/design support, no multiple review rounds before shipping
- Extreme speed and urgency; sets and hits aggressive self-imposed timelines
- Disagreeable — has opinions they can back and argue; persuades and acts rather than waiting to be told
- Courage, grit, a chip on the shoulder, high ambition; athlete/long-term-reward mindset a plus
- Genuinely wants to get hands dirty in the physical world / on the factory floor
Background
- Slope over experience — hungry, high-agency, impact-obsessed over narrow feature-depth; younger + only-software is fine if obsessed and open to the floor
- Physical-world exposure (robotics, a double degree, "built rockets as a kid") is a strong nice-to-have — a near-must for senior hires
- Recent experience valued (software changed a lot in ~2 years); AI-native
Backgrounds to Avoid
- Legacy manufacturing / defense-prime software orgs (a hard no for software)
- FAANG/ex-FANG, especially first ~2 years out of college
- People who stayed years at a non-leading company; "use an existing tool and plaster on top" thinkers
- "AI-in-name-only" industrial shops
Who Will Thrive Here
- A founding-caliber builder who wants to build the OS for physical manufacturing from scratch and own it end to end
- Someone with slope, urgency, courage, and a chip on the shoulder who compresses timelines
- Happy on the factory floor solving an operator's real problem, not just shipping bits
- Ex-Palantir / AI-native-ERP relational-systems builders, ideally with physical-world exposure
- Mission-driven about Western industrial/defense re-industrialization