<aside> 🌱

**Tonk is hiring. If the following resonates, you could be a great fit:**

• You want to solve historic problems at the frontier of AI, distributed systems and cryptography.
• You want to join an engineering team that traverses from research to reality on a daily basis.
• You’re thoughtful about technology & our responsibility to leave the world in a better & more beautiful state than we found it.
• You crave that feeling when you’re growing uncomfortably fast, alongside a team that challenges & supports you.
• You’re hungry for creative ownership, without the burdens of bureaucratic overhead. </aside>

About Tonk

Tonk is a venture-backed, London-based startup.

This is a chance to join us at an inflection point as we race towards product-market fit.

The product: a next-generation backend that helps people use AI to build & share applets that integrate with their data and embed into their daily life.

The progress: strong early traction with developers & partners; we have the capital, talent and relationships to propel us at speed. Our CTO is a world-class applied cryptographer & distributed systems engineer who’s uniquely able to deliver on our vision.

The vision: Tonk's dream is to build a new internet that fulfils the promise of the computer as companion - a symbiotic tool that helps us think, play and create together. We see platform feudalism and AI centralisation as our opponent. Our ambition is to write the next chapter in a historical lineage that stretches back through Ethereum, Geocities, Hypercard, the Apple MacIntosh, Engelbart's NLS, Sutherland's Sketchpad & Bush's Memex.

The team: multidisciplinary - we’ve started & exited successful startups, worked at the highest levels in the heart of Silicon Valley, graduated from world-class universities - but we’re creative, with a deep background in art, dance and theatre. We’re backed by world-class investors. Our deep backgrounds in cryptography & distributed systems, coupled with the wider AI revolution, positions Tonk exceptionally well in pursuit of its mission.

Read more on our website.

The role

You’ll level up faster than you ever thought possible - getting deep exposure to distributed systems, AI tooling, and cryptography in a way few junior roles can offer. You’ll work side by side with founders and senior engineers who’ll support your growth, push your thinking, and give you creative ownership early.

We don’t expect you to know everything on day one, but you can expect to:

• Work primarily in Typescript & Rust (but you may need to learn new languages as we go)
• Ideate new features and implement them end-to-end
• Build simple & beautiful frontends
• Take responsibility for smooth launches
• Improve performance & reliability
• Gather feedback and prioritise improvements
• Experiment with new ideas and technologies, contributing not just code but shaping how Tonk evolves in pursuit of its mission

But your work won’t just be writing code - you’ll grow in your ability to:

• Structure and solve novel problems
• Work closely with users
• Build a global network of experts
• Drive outcomes, communicating smoothly and staying cool through a high-pressured, creative environment