<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 for vibe coders. Think Firebase + OAuth for the new era of local, small-scale software.

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. Our advisors include senior figures at, or who were responsible for building, Anthropic, Google, Facebook and more.

The vision: Tonk's mission is to create a world in which people are free to build their own software and collaborate over their own networks. AI is fuelling a surge of creative technologists crafting personal tools bespoke to local contexts - where working with data feels as intuitive as molding putty. But for symbiotic software to evolve at the speed of thought, we need a better backend that's lightweight, flexible and interoperable. As the web fragments into unique digital worlds, we envisage a cryptographic data-sharing network that connects us without losing our organic diversity. That's the new internet we're building.

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