Founding Engineer

About Lantern

Lantern Learning Labs is building a screen-free digital tutor for kids ages 5–10. It's designed to live on the kitchen table, where it sees what a child is working on and coaches them by voice through reading, writing, math, and more. We have working prototypes in family homes and a founding team with backgrounds in learning, design, and consumer products.

The Role

You'll be our first engineer and own the technology end to end. You'll ship the product families use every day and help shape the company from the start. We're based in Los Angeles and open to remote for the right person.

Key Responsibilities

• Build the real-time voice experience: listening to young kids, understanding them, and responding naturally
• Write the software that runs on the device and connects to the cloud
• Build the backend and data systems, with children's privacy built in from the start
• Build the parent app
• Choose the stack, set engineering standards, and help hire the team as we grow

Requirements & Tech Stack

• You've built and shipped products that real people use, and owned them across the stack
• You're comfortable across front end, backend, and cloud
• You make good calls with limited information and like being close to users
• You want to build something kids and parents will love

Nice to have

• Experience with real-time voice or conversational AI
• Consumer devices or embedded software
• Products for kids or families
• Startup or founding-team experience

What we offer

• Founding-team equity and a real say in what we build
• Title, scope, and compensation sized to your experience