Staff Engineer
$200k - $280k USD
About daydream
daydream is building the world’s best SEO agent, paired with the top 1% of human experts. We own organic search end-to-end, so customers don’t have to hire specialized teams, evaluate tools, or manage agencies.
Winning in search now requires producing expert-level content at scale and adapting continuously as ranking systems and user behavior change. Existing tools surface metrics without making decisions, and agencies depend on slow, manual workflows that don’t compound. Even well-resourced teams struggle to turn sustained effort into reliable growth.
daydream replaces fragmented tools and external vendors with a single system that plans and executes SEO continuously. The SEO agent handles analysis, planning, and generation, while experienced Growth Leads convert that work into shipped pages, technical fixes, and updated priorities, and remain accountable for performance over time.
We’ve raised over $20M from First Round Capital, Basis Set Ventures, WndrCo, and SOMA Capital, and are backed by growth leaders from Notion, Airtable, Webflow, and Dropbox, including Lenny Rachitsky and Eli Schwartz, author of Product-Led SEO.
The Team
You’ll work closely with a small, senior team across engineering, design, and growth:
Shravan (CTO), formerly an Engineering Lead at Flixed and a Software Engineer at Facebook, where he worked on mass-scale web scraping for Facebook Jobs and Meta Reality Labs.
Vishruth (Founding Applied AI Engineer), previously a Data Scientist at Klaviyo specializing in NLP, with a research background from Cornell.
Daniel (Founding Applied AI Engineer), formerly a Data Engineer on Tesla’s Autopilot team, working on large-scale data systems and applied machine learning, and previously Lead Data Engineer at Replit
Tom (Founding Designer), who previously led product design at Blockless and contributes to UI engineering.
You’ll also work directly with Growth Leads; senior SEO practitioners who operate the system daily and provide tight feedback loops on how the AI performs in real execution.
How you’ll make an impact
As a Staff Engineer at daydream, you’ll provide technical leadership across the product while remaining deeply hands-on.
You’ll partner closely with the CTO to shape system architecture, guide execution, and raise the quality bar across the engineering organization. This is not a people-management role; you’ll lead through design decisions, code quality, and consistent delivery of scalable systems.
In this role, you will:
Act as the technical lead for day-to-day engineering execution across the team
Partner with the CTO to organize, prioritize, and sequence engineering work
Design and evolve core system architecture, guiding implementation decisions
Review pull requests and set standards for code quality, reliability, and maintainability
Identify technical risks early and propose pragmatic, scalable solutions
Mentor engineers through technical guidance, feedback, and example
Improve engineering workflows to increase speed without sacrificing quality
Work primarily across backend systems, data pipelines, and AI-enabled services, using Python, TypeScript, and C#, deployed on Google Cloud
Minimum Qualifications
Significant experience building and operating production software systems
Strong engineering judgment and comfort with making architectural tradeoffs
Experience owning systems end-to-end, from design through long-term maintenance
Ability to lead through influence, code, and technical decision-making rather than people management
Preferred Qualifications
Experience in a Staff or Senior Engineer role at a high-growth company
Background in building distributed systems or complex backend platforms
Familiarity with AI-enabled or data-intensive systems
Strong written and verbal communication skills
A consistently high bar for code quality, reliability, and technical excellence
Position Location This role is based in our Hayes Valley office in San Francisco and requires in-person collaboration five (5) days per week. We offer paid relocation for candidates outside the San Francisco Bay Area.
Compensation The base salary range for this role is $200,000- 280,000, depending on experience, along with meaningful equity in daydream.
What you’ll love
Health coverage includes medical, dental, and vision with HSA and FSA options, plus One Medical, Talkspace, and Teladoc
Commuter benefit includes a monthly reimbursement to support your commute to the office
Meals on us include lunch reimbursement on in-office days, with dinner covered when you’re working late
Personal well-being includes an annual stipend for gym, fitness classes, therapy, and wellness expenses
Learning and development includes an annual stipend for books, courses, and classes to support your growth
Team retreats include two company retreats per year to connect, collaborate, and reset
Monthly team time includes regular dinners and outings to spend time together
Dog-friendly office (we have corgis)