We are small on purpose. For now.
GearHead is a small, careful team building something we think is important. We are not racing to grow headcount. When we add people, we add them slowly and for the right reasons.
An honest picture of the team.
Right now, GearHead is one founder who codes, plus a small set of trusted contractors and advisors who help on specific things. That is not a placeholder for "we have not hired yet." It is a deliberate choice about how to build a product like this.
The platform is intentionally over-built relative to the team size. That is because we believe small teams using leverage well can build category-defining products, and because we would rather grow slowly with the right people than quickly with the wrong ones.
As we grow, we will hire. We will list real roles here when they exist. We are not going to post fake roles to look bigger than we are, and we are not going to collect applications when we have no intent to interview.
That said, if you read this page and feel a strong pull toward what we are building, we would still love to hear from you. The right person at the right time is worth a conversation, even if there is no formal opening.
What we care about
These are not aspirations. They are how we already work.
Craft over scale
We would rather ship one well-built feature than ten half-finished ones. Engineering quality, design quality, writing quality. The product has to actually work and feel good to use.
Honesty with customers
We do not oversell. We do not promise features we have not built. We do not put graphics of products that do not exist on our website. When we get something wrong, we say so.
Long-form thinking
We write things down. We think before we ship. We have arguments about whether a feature should exist before we build it. The thinking time is not lost time; it is what keeps the product coherent.
Real balance
The founder runs a dojo and has a family. The people we work with have lives. We are building a multi-decade company, not a sprint. Burnout is not a sign of dedication; it is a sign of poor planning.
If you are thinking about reaching out
These are the directions we are likely to grow into. None of them are open roles today. If they describe you and you are interested in being on our radar for when they are, we would love to know.
Senior full-stack engineering
Laravel, React, PostgreSQL, the AI integration layer. Someone who can ship full features end to end, has opinions about architecture, and is comfortable working without a lot of process overhead.
Likely the first hire after seed funding.Product design and front-end craft
Someone who cares about how the product feels to use, can do real interface design, and is comfortable shipping the front-end work themselves. We do not split design and front-end into separate roles.
Open to a fractional or part-time arrangement.Customer success and onboarding
We onboard every account directly because that produces better outcomes. As the customer base grows, we will need someone who can lead onboarding at scale without losing the quality of the current process.
Will become a real role when customer load justifies it.Domain experts for playbooks
Each industry playbook is informed by someone with real experience in that domain. We are interested in part-time advisor relationships with practitioners who want to help shape playbooks in their field (legal, healthcare, construction, accounting, marketing).
Ongoing. Reach out anytime if this is you.Strategic advisors
People with operating experience in SMB software, AI products, or scaled services businesses. Not full-time roles, but real ongoing advisor relationships with the right people are valuable to us.
Selective. Quality over quantity.If you do end up here
Some honest details about what working at GearHead looks like, because we would rather be transparent up front than oversell and disappoint later.
- Remote-first, asynchronous-friendly. Based in Portland OR, but we hire for skill not location. Mostly written communication, occasional sync calls.
- Direct work with the founder. No layers of management. You will get unfiltered context and unfiltered feedback. This works well for some people and not at all for others.
- Real ownership. Whatever you work on, you own. We do not micromanage and we do not split work into tiny tickets. We do expect that ownership produces real results.
- Equity for early hires. Meaningful equity for early team members. Comp is competitive but not Big Tech, calibrated against the equity upside.
- Working hours are yours to manage. We care about output and outcomes. If you need to pick up your kid at 3pm, pick up your kid at 3pm. If you do your best work at 10pm, do your best work at 10pm.
- We work on things that matter. The product is helping real small businesses do real work. Every feature ships into something a customer is going to actually use.
Want to be on our radar?
Send a real introduction. Tell us what you do, what you would want to work on, and what would have to be true for you to want to be part of this. We read every message.