We are hiring a Head of Technology for the garden3d creative collective, to lead engineering at Sanctuary Computer and garden3d in the era of agentic computer code.

About garden3d

We are worker owned creative collective, innovating on everything from brands and IRL communities to IoT devices and cross platform apps. We share profit, open source everything, spin out new businesses, and invest in exciting ideas through financial and/or in-kind contributions.

Our client roster includes Google, Stripe, Figma, Hinge, Black Socialists in America, ACLU, Pratt, Parsons, Mozilla, The Nobel Prize, MIT, Gnosis, Etsy & Gagosian.

We’re the software team behind innovative products like The Light Phone & Mill, and we operate a global, decentralized community space collective called Index Space.

We think of our garden3d as collective for creative people, prioritizing a happy, talented, and diverse studio culture. We work on projects that bring value to our world, and we balance deep care for the work we do with a genuine curiosity about life outside of our jobs.

Sanctuary Computer - Development

At Sanctuary Computer we’re building a different type of technology shop – one that prioritizes close collaboration between the client and the craftsperson.

Our projects range from design-forward websites, to robust web apps, to native mobile development.

XXIX - Design

When we started XXIX in 2013, we set out to create a different kind of design studio and we’ve thrived because we continually ask what a creative practice can be.

We’re building a radically different kind of organization that values autonomy, growth, transparency, and shared responsibility.

Index - Community

Index is network of physical spaces all around the world, Index provides space for the exchange of knowledge and tools.

We nurture trust within the creative community through generosity and abundance of ideas and care.

garden3d TK — Media

At garden3d, we’re in the early stages of building an experimental media company exploring emerging themes related to the evolving landscape of technology, design and culture.

We aim to monetize this outlet, publish books, produce screenplays, and release music.

Plus, our partner organizations

Lightphone
Mill
IngredientAI

⛰️ The Head of Technology Role

The garden3d Head of Technology has one mandate: everything we build works, holds up in production, and gets built the smartest way available to us. We are a house of brands - Sanctuary Computer (development), XXIX (design), Index Space (community), USB Club (digital community), and the garden3d umbrella itself - and a lot of what all of them ship runs on software we wrote. Working in close partnership with our founder & president Hugh Francis, this person sets the engineering standard, and builds the culture that holds it.

You can be based anywhere. A lot of our people are in New York and there's some gravity here, but we already work across timezones and we would happily hire in Europe, Singapore, Chicago, or wherever you are. If you're the right person, we want to hear from you.

This role works with studio leads, developers, designers, project managers and clients across every garden3d vertical.

This person can move between a Rails migration, a Next.js app, a firmware release plan and an agent loop in the same week, and raise the bar on each of them.

They span all of garden3d, but their home base is Sanctuary Computer, where roughly 70% of their time goes. Our development studio is where the engineering standard gets set, and where it either holds or slips: architecture, code review, estimation, and the hardest technical calls on our biggest projects. The other 30% goes to garden3d's broader technology story: how we ship product for USB Club, build with agents across the collective, which tools and platforms we bet on, and what we build for ourselves.

They are also how we get better people. Our work is only as good as the engineers making it, so this person hunts for exceptional talent, sells them on us, and sets them up to do the best work of their careers. The ideal candidate looks at a worker-owned collective with four studios, an open P&L and clients like Google, Stripe, Brooklyn Museum and The Nobel Prize, and sees an engineering practice they can propel among the best in the world.

Responsibilities & Mandates

️ Systems that hold up

We build web apps, native apps, data pipelines, content platforms and connected devices for clients who can't afford for them to fall over. This person has engineered complex systems for a long time, and it shows in the architecture they draw before a line is written. They own the technical blueprint on our most important projects, and they make the hard calls on the rest: what to build, what to buy, and what to leave out.

All in on agentic development

The way software gets built changed, and we intend to be ahead of it. This person is already deep in it: loop engineering, agents running against evals, agents that open their own PRs, and the guardrails that make all of that trustworthy. They make agentic development the default way Sanctuary Computer works, and they can tell the difference between a demo and a system a team can rely on.

Practical engineering

We strongly prefer convention over configuration, boring technology, and platforms that let a small team ship a lot. TypeScript is the default language, Rails and Phoenix handle what they're best at, and we'd rather deploy to a platform like Render or Heroku than run our own infrastructure. This person practices value engineering: the simplest thing that works, built well, at a cost the client is glad to pay.

Code quality at Sanctuary Computer

Sanctuary Computer is where our engineering standard lives, so this is where most of their energy goes. They set what good code review looks like, keep our senior developers sharp on architecture and quality, and make sure that bar holds without slowing the team down.

Hiring and empowering the very best

They are a magnet for exceptional engineers. They know where to find them, how to convince them, and how to give them enough room to do their best work while still holding them to the standard. People who work for this person should get visibly better, and should say so.

Estimation, scoping and delivery

They make sure our teams can reliably estimate and story point the work ahead, and that we deliver at a pace that meets the dates we promised and protects our margins. When an estimate is wrong, they find out why and fix the process.

The technical voice in new business

Our clients include Google, Stripe, Figma, Mozilla and The Nobel Prize. This person joins new business calls as the trusted technical consultant, scopes the work, writes the technical side of proposals, and can explain a hard tradeoff to a client's CTO and their CEO in the same meeting.

Hardware sense

We're the software team behind The Light Phone and Mill, so a good share of our work touches devices. This person doesn't need to be a firmware engineer, but they understand how hardware works, where it constrains the software, and how to plan a project that spans both.

The garden3d technology story

Across the collective, they decide which tools and platforms we bet on, how every studio uses agents, and which internal tools are worth turning into products. When someone at garden3d asks "how should we build this?", this person has the answer, or knows who does.

Culture

They model garden3d's values of partnership, curiosity, and accountability. The engineers they lead do the best work of their careers here, because the feedback is honest, the recognition is earned, and the craft rubs off

Special Projects

In addition to day to day responsibilities, here’s an idea of some of the projects this role may spearhead or support in coming years →

Making agentic development the default way Sanctuary Computer builds, with loops and evals the whole team trusts
Setting the shared technical conventions every garden3d studio builds from
Landing the kind of flagship engineering engagement that changes what people think we do
Hiring the next generation of the engineering team, across every garden3d studio
Turning the internal tools and agents we build for ourselves into products
Partnering with the Head of Design so our own studio websites are as well engineered as they are designed

Qualifications

This is a great opportunity for someone looking to make a significant impact in a growing, dynamic company. Based on the responsibilities of this role, we think the right candidate has the following experience and skills:

Must have:

12+ years building software, at least three of them leading engineers inside a studio, agency, startup or founder-led company
Deep experience engineering complex systems, shipped and run in production: distributed services, data pipelines, multi-platform products
A true technology generalist, comfortable across frontend, backend, data, infrastructure and native
A strong preference for practical engineering: convention over configuration, boring technology, and platforms as a service over bespoke infrastructure
All in on agentic development: loop engineering, evals, and agents doing real work in a real codebase
Fluency across most of our stack: React, Next.js, Ruby on Rails, Elixir & Phoenix, Sanity, Postgres, Redis. You won't use all of it every week, but you should be able to review any of it
Experience as the technical lead in winning work: scoping, estimating and pitching to clients
A track record of hiring exceptional engineers, and of people who got measurably better working for them
Hands-on. This person can still write the code, not only review it (and will get on the tools when the need arises)

Nice-to-have:

A sense of how hardware works: firmware, embedded systems, IoT, and shipping software for physical products
Experience in a client services environment (a consultancy, agency or studio)
Experience in a Sales Engineer or Solutions Architect role
Open source projects they've started or maintained
Experience fostering close collaboration between design and engineering teams
Experience inside a worker-owned, open-book, or otherwise unusual company
A network in the engineering community: the meetups, the conferences, the people worth hiring
Interests in design, art, music, food or fashion. We find these people have a well rounded sense of quality

Who you are

The person we’re looking for is happy, relaxed and easy to get along with and appreciates a commitment to a culture of transparency, non-dictatorial leadership styles, and alternative methodologies. They’re flexible on anything except conceits that will lower their usually outstanding work quality. They work “smart” by carefully managing their workflow and team.

How we interview

After you submit your application, a member of our team will reach out. Our interview process starts with an intro call to answer any questions you have about the role and to learn a bit more about your experience and interests.

From there, we’ll follow up with a panel interview call where you get to meet a few members of our team, to openly discuss some of our challenges and ensure your skills and interests align with where we’re going as a business.

For qualified candidates, the process wraps with a reference call, and an offer to follow.

Compensation

This is a permanent leadership role. If this individual exceeds expectations in their first four months, we'll shape the permanent role together, with scope and compensation that grow as the studios and their revenue do. After a period of proven success (12 - 24 months), they become eligible to join our worker ownership program.

We start with a 4-month fraction trial contract, paid hourly between $110 - $175 p/hr pending seniority & experience. In the first few weeks of the trial, this individual will propose their own goals to define success in their trial, and present them to our leadership team for approval.

At garden3d, we believe that those who shoulder the most responsibility and create the greatest impact should be paid accordingly. This role greatly favors autonomous, competent & ambitious operators.

‍ How we work:

We believe that there’s a better balance between the poles of freelancing & full time, and for that reason we work differently to most shops:

Transparency & Ownership: We release out Profit & Loss statements to the community each year, open source our best ideas, and talk business & money with everyone in the company. We’re proud to run our business with integrity, and for that reason we share everything with our team & community.
150% Carbon Negative: Our studio offsets 150% of the carbon we use to do business each year, dated back to our founding in 2015. We turn down work that is not in-line with our morals, and we encourage our peers to do the same. We have been certified climate neutral since 2021.
Strong Morals: Since our founding, we've turned down somewhere between $1mm - $2mm of work that didn't meet our moral standards. (Most of that was DTC brands that can't show a valid sustainability initiative).
Async & Decentralized: We use tools optimized for calm, thoughtful communication, and opt for async whenever possible. We fight hard to maintain our focus time.
Remote Friendly: Our company is fluent in remote work, making our workplace more decentralized, and democratized in the process.
Ideas & Products: In our spare studio time, we work to build our own open source or internal products to diversify & bolster our income. We create amazing technology products for our clients, so why not for the studio?

→ Read more on our Substack, over here.

How to apply

We’re excited to hear from you! ❤

Kindly submit a complete and thoughtful application, including relevant links that help verify your work experience and identity. Applications with missing or insufficient information will not move forward in the review process.

Our team carefully reviews every complete submission, and we truly appreciate the time and effort you put into applying! :)

Sanctuary Computer

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