first engineer at Doordash, Stripe product team, founding operations lead
early startups hiring, co-founder searches, roles at breakout startups
✨ Hey there this is a free edition of next play’s newsletter, where we share under-the-radar opportunities to help you figure out what’s next in your journey. Join our private Slack community here and access $1000s of dollars of product discounts here. Recent top posts: The Definitive Guide to Forward Deployed Engineering, Actually useful ways to use AI to help you land a job at a startup.
This quote from a Next Play community member (who now works at an exciting Sequoia-backed startup) really energizes us: “next play was my secret weapon to joining an exceptional startup in <2 weeks!” Hopefully more of this to come!
Co-founders and people to jam with:
Sabih is a 2x technical founder looking to join a cofounder in the b2b space. He’s looking at industries like construction, energy, and logistics. Reach out: antpalmolive@gmail.com.
Anastasia previously started InkWell Games, a platform with thousands of players. She’s looking to bring on a cofounder, ideally someone with a love for puzzles, and also someone with a combo of engineering and design experience. Reach out: anastasia@inkwellgames.com.
Rishav is a growth and analytics person looking to building something in the mental health/wellness space. Reach out: rishavdey1025@gmail.com.
If you’d like to meet a cofounder, check out Friends of Next Play. When you join, you get invited to our private Slack Group, where we introduce you to people, host loads of events (like upcoming workshops with negotiation coaches and AI prototyping experts), share extra content, and more. You can join here.
Early teams:
(Reminder to not spam any posts and only reach out if you’re a candidate)
Jon was the first engineer at DoorDash ($80 billion company now!). He’s building a stealth physical AI company that was incubated by the venture fund Greenoaks. They are hiring an ops generalist and a founding engineer. Reach out: jon@goldsmith.is. (SF, Remote)
Emmanuel from Treat is hiring a founding operations lead. They are building a new system aimed at solving disease, starting with pets. Apply here. (NYC)
Ross previously founded Dutchie, the leading cannabis point of sale platform in North America. Now he’s working on Yoshi, an agentic personal finance platform backed by Ribbit Capital. They are hiring software engineers. Reach out: Ross@yoshi.ai.
Derrick from Sightline is building a supply chain platform for the restaurant industry. They are hiring a marketing lead, a data engineer, and a fullstack engineer. Apply here. (NYC)
Mihir from Rockland is building an AI platform for medicaid-serving organizations. They are hiring a founding engineer. Apply here. (SF)
Wei-Wei from Momentic is hiring founding GTM (sales, marketing) people. They are building an automated testing platform. Apply here. (SF)
A stealth AI Radiology company with VC backing is hiring founding full-stack engineers. The current team is MDs, ex-Tolan, ex-Aerospace, ex-Citadel, and ex-VC. Apply here. (DC)
Jason, previously a human interface designer at Apple, is hiring people who want to build social AI that helps people care about other people. Apply here. (SF, Remote)
Eric from Manifest is hiring a sales and growth associate. They are building a legal services immigration platform. Apply here. (NYC)
Cyrus from Haven is building a “CPA-in-your-pocket” platform. They are hiring account executives. Apply here. (NYC)
Ryan from Axiom Therapeutics is hiring a head of operations. They are building a drug discovery platform. Apply here. (London)
Michael from Quiet Capital is helping a stealth early-stage healthcare startup on-track to break $10m ARR soon hire their founding team: biz ops, sales, engineering. Apply here. (NYC)
Andrew from The General Intelligence Company of New York is hiring a chief of staff. They are building AI that will run businesses autonomously. Apply here. (NYC)
Chris from Single Aim is building a platform to match qualified collaborating physicians. They are hiring a customer success manager. Apply here. (Remote)
Lisa from Siena AI is building an AI CX agent for the commerce industry. They are hiring account executives. Apply here. (NYC)
We made a list of 38 startups currently hiring with $5m to $10m raised.
Hiring? Email hi@nextplay.so and we’ll send you our curated database of candidates looking to connect with great companies.
Scaling startups:
Matt from Doctronic is hiring across product, clinical ops, sales, product, and engineering. They’re building an AI doctor that makes healthcare faster and more affordable, and just became the first AI doctor approved to renew prescriptions in Utah. Apply here. (NYC, SF, LA, Remote)
Jose from Method Financial is hiring a Product Manager. They are a fintech company that provides API-based connectivity to consumer credit and liability accounts with embedded payment capabilities. Apply here. (SF, NYC, Austin, D.C.)
Mike from Traba is hiring a growth operations associate. They are building an industrial staffing platform. Apply here. (NYC)
Ahmed from Sully is looking to hire an ex-founder. They are building AI that augment healthcare clinicians. They have signed 450+ organizations in customers in just 16 months and raised $25m. Apply here. (SF)
Rory from Checkmate Performance Network just launched out of stealth and has grown to $10m+ run rate profitably in the last 20 weeks (with over 4.9 million monthly active users). They are hiring a head of marketing and salespeople. Apply here. (Remote)
Drake from Raspberry AI is building a generative AI platform for the fashion industry. They just doubled their enterprise sales team and are still hiring account executives. Apply here. (NYC, Remote)
Cristina from Linear said they added more net new revenue in January 2026 than they did in their first three years combined. They are hiring GTM people, rev ops people, and customer success people for their purpose-built project management and planning tool. Apply here. (Remote)
Kyle from Valon is hiring for a new kind of role: a mixed product, design, code, and operations role (someone who loves using Claude Code). They are building an AI platform for mortgage servicing. Apply here.
Alexandre from Stripe is hiring product people for their core payments team. Apply here. (NYC, SF, Seattle, Chicago)
George from Hebbia said they just added $7 million in revenue in the past 24 hours (more than all the revenue they generated in their first few years of business). They are building an AI platform for the finance industry. They are hiring in basically every department: GTM, strategy, engineering, marketing, and more. Apply here. (NYC, SF)
Chasen from Doordash is hiring two strategy and operations people to work on the DashPass team. Apply here. (SF, NYC, Chicago, Phoenix, LA, Miami)
Sagar from Tavus just announced a $40m round and they’re hiring for 15 roles: marketing, recruiting, and more. They are building an AI that can see, hear, act, and understand in real-time. Apply here. (SF, NYC)
Akshat from Overview is building an AI manufacturing platform. They are hiring a head of technical special projects. Apply here. (SF)
Deeni from Gamma is hiring a product manager to lead their ecosystem. They are building a presentation and website builder. Apply here. (SF)
Olivia from GiveDirectly is hiring a philanthropy manager. They’ve raised over $1 billion for philanthropy since 2011. Apply here. (SF)
Brian from Siro is hiring BDRs and a rev ops analyst to focus on cold-calling. They are building an in-person sales analysis and coaching platform. Apply here. (NYC)
Bruno from Clay is hiring a founding marketer to lead their EMEA expansion, as Clay has grown to $100m+ in revenue. Clay is a data platform for GTM. Apply here. (London)
We made a list of 30 startups hiring with $50m to $100m raised.
Investing and other:
Sophia from Trust Fund is hiring a part-time investment manager. Apply here. (London)
Finn from South Park Commons is hiring a recruiting coordinator to help run their fund talent network/community. Apply here. (SF)
Brittany from CRV is hiring an AI engineering lead to build AI for venture capital. Apply here. (SF)
We’re running a bunch of new experiments for the community right now, including:
A quick survey we ask anyone looking for a job right now to fill out [sharing the results in a few weeks!].
An application-only WhatsApp group chat for Talent/Recruiting/People people, hosted by Caitlin Cooke, former talent leader at Github, a16z, and Google. Apply to join here.
An application-only WhatsApp group chat for growth/GTM engineering people, hosted by Noah Adelstein, growth lead at Rippling. Apply to join here.
Some new useful updates to the free Next Play candidate platform, where you can find filter for jobs by role, geography and also look at trending companies and recent fundraises.
More content, like how Charley Ma became an early business hire at three unicorns (Plaid, Ramp, and Alloy).
Note:
Thanks for reading! If you have any notes, thoughts, or suggestions, please send us an email: hi@nextplay.so.
Would appreciate if you could upvote and share this edition if you liked it. Thanks so much!


Always full of great ideas for the unorthodox career transition