Software Engineering Co-op

About Subconscious

Agents are eating the economy, but it's still the early days. Token useage is increasing 2,500% year over year, agents token consumption is growing 7x faster than humans, and adoption of agentic systems is on the rise across professions. All signs point to these trends continuing, as agentic workloads become irreplacable across software, cybersecurity, legal, finance, HR, sales, and science tasks. We are building the foundation.

Subconscious is an inference platform specifically designed to power long-running agents. For tasks that consume 200k+ tokens, our inference system delivers unparalleled speed, accuracy, and cost efficiency. As agents proliferate, Subconscious will be a provider in every agent stack.

About the team

We are a small, hardworking team in Cambridge. We think this is the best time in history to build: after transformers, before superintelligence. We like uncharted experiments, shipping fast, and celebrating with a Guinness. Our mascot is Alpha (Hongyin's dog, Alpha Go).

We value creativity, ownership, and work that does not come with a blueprint. At this stage, few things are well scoped. You will get real ownership and work directly with our founding team.

We have had some epic co-ops that have contributed immense amounts to the product and company culture, and we want to continue that tradition.

About the role

This is a full-time software engineering co-op. You will split time between contributing to our cloud platform, CLI, and inference platform, and building demos and evaluations that show what our API can do. You will work towards owning large projects, ship to production every week, and meaningfully impact the company. You will get the full early-stage startup experience. 1 month here will be like 6 months at a big company.

Responsibilities

Contribute to our cloud platform, CLI, inference platform, and open-source repos.
Design, build, and launch projects that show what the system can do - from computer-use agents to benchmark evaluations.
Contribute to solving complex billing, load balancing, and observability challenges across the stack.
Help build the product factory that makes our team ship code like a team 10x our size.

Requirements

Pursuing a bachelor's degree in computer science, software engineering, or a related field.
Strong coding ability and a history of live side projects, ideally with real users.
Experience with agent-driven development (Cursor, Claude Code, etc.).
Experience with modern web workflows (GitHub, Vercel).
Proficiency in at least one of the following: TypeScript, Rust, or Python.
Understanding of APIs, webhooks, and developer-facing tools.
Ability to design, prototype, and deploy small applications quickly.
Self-directed and eager to learn in a high-autonomy environment.
Storytelling skills. You will be giving demos and speaking about the company in Boston and on campus.

Nice to have

Experience with Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Pulumi, etc.).
Experience with GitHub Actions and CI/CD.
Prior co-op, internship, or personal project experience in web development or AI tooling.
Familiarity with agent frameworks (LangChain, Claude, coding agents, and similar).
Interest in developer experience, community, and open-source culture.
Design experience. If you can design, we will use it.
You want to be in Boston. We are very proud to build here.

Location

Cambridge, MA, five days a week in person, in our Kendall Square office. You will work directly with the founders and founding engineers.

Compensation

Salary will be $25/hr for the duration of the co-op. For exceptional performance, we may award bonuses and ask you to join us full time after graduation.

Benefits

Unlimited Claude Code and Cursor credits, an office in Kendall Square, weekly lunches, a strong network of previous co-ops, and a well-connected founding team that will go to bat for you if you do well.

How the application works

We review your initial application.
If it looks like a fit, we invite you to a demo challenge.
If we like what we see, we invite you in for a final interview, ideally in person.
After that, we get you an answer as soon as we can.

NOTE If you would like to stand out in our applicant pool, submit a PR to our open source subc CLI tool or marathon coding harness. A meaningful contribution will accelerate you to the front of the line.