Our mission 🗺

At Ampersand, we are solving the problem of SaaS interoperability, starting with user-facing integrations. SaaS engineers that need to read and write data between their product and other products shouldn’t have to suffer through poorly-documented and inconsistent APIs, esoteric customer setups, and brittle sync pipelines.

We start by building a Terraform-like experience for creating and managing integrations, and eventually create the de facto way that products talk to each other. We want to usher in a future where data can flow freely between applications, where a new product "just works" with a company’s existing SaaS stack. We are hiring for a small team of Founding Engineers to help us build this vision.

We’re just getting started 💡

After talking to 100+ engineers and product leaders about their integration pain points and the gaps in existing solutions, we defined and have early validation for a product that we think is game-changing. We raised $4.7M from top-tier VCs (early investors in Apple, Oculus, and Supabase) and strategic angel investors (like founders of Dropbox, Firebase, and Airtable) so that we can bring this product to life. (Read our TechCrunch coverage here).

About us 👋

Ampersand was founded by Ayan Barua and Lauren Long. We are both engineers and repeat founders, with a rare combination of developer tools and SaaS experience.

Ayan (CEO) previously founded Siftery - a venture-backed SaaS discovery and SaaS management company. G2.com acquired Siftery in 2018. Post-acquisition, as VP Eng and a key member of the exec team, Ayan helped G2 become the leading SaaS marketplace and launch new products like Track and Investor. At both Siftery and G2, Ayan experienced the pain of building integrations first-hand. Before Siftery, Ayan co-founded Credii, a dynamic shortlisting/pricing engine focused on CRM and MarTech buyers, and was a senior engineer at Sapient working with Fortune 100 companies.

Lauren (CTO) was previously the founding Tech Lead for Firebase Extensions at Google - a platform of packaged solutions that developers used for integrating their Firebase apps with 3P APIs. The product hit a nerve with developers and Lauren realized that user-facing integrations is an even bigger pain point. Before Firebase Extensions, she was leading Cloud Functions for Firebase. Lauren founded her first company right out of college, was the first Product Manager at the hardware startup Nymi, and an early engineer at Shortwave, the next-gen email platform.

Together, we believe:

• Building a generational company takes time. We view this as a marathon and not a sprint. We want our team to have full lives in addition to work.

• Trust is best built in-person. We will have a hybrid work culture, and spend time weekly in-person at the San Francisco office.

About you 🤝

• You are a frontend engineer who has had in-depth experience with React or similar frameworks.

• You have programmed for long enough to not need a lot of guidance, and know how to seek the right resources for solving open-ended problems.

• You are action-oriented, and are excited to ship features and iterate with customers.

• You are excited to build for developers, and are ready to do what it takes to make them successful, even if it involves non-coding tasks like documentation, or hopping on a video call to help them troubleshoot.

What you’ll do 🛠

At Ampersand, you’ll get to build a developer platform from the ground up. Some of the projects that you might tackle in the first 6-12 months include:

• Creating embeddable UI components that builders can add to their app for integration set up, management, and configuration.

• Building the Management Console where builders can monitor and troubleshoot integrations.

The downsides 🙃

Every job has its downsides, and we want to be transparent about them. Some of the downsides of this job might be:

• There aren’t a lot of predefined process and structure, which might feel uncomfortable at times. On the plus side, you’ll get to help us define them.

• There’s some grunt work involved. While we think there are lots of exciting technical challenges to be solved, there will be days when you’ll be reading bad 3P API documentation or chasing down an unclear error message.

• You’ll be expected to wear multiple hats. In the early stages, we won’t have specialized teams like customer support or developer relations. We’ll be sharing the load across the team (including the founders!)

You’ll notice that economic instability is not on the list. We actually think that now is a great time to join a startup. YC has a good post on this. (We’re not a YC company but many of the same points apply to us.)

The upsides 😀

We believe that for the right person, the upsides massively outweighs the downsides. They include:

• The opportunity to build a product from 0 to 1, and not just any product. A developer platform has unique complexities and many surfaces that touch the customer - including SDKs, APIs, CLI, UI, etc.

• Tremendous learning and growth opportunities as the company scales. You’ll not only learn a lot as an engineer by having a large scope, you’ll also get exposure into other aspects of the business like marketing, customer development, strategy, etc. This is the perfect role if you think you might start your own company one day.

• There’s something special about building for developers - your impact is magnified because you are providing the building blocks that other products rely on. Plus developers make great customers - it’s fun to talk to users you can empathize with, and they are great at filing bugs. 😉

• And of course, there’s big financial upside if we do well. By joining early, you’ll get more significant equity than others that join later.