Senior Software Engineer

We the people — and the taxpayers — deserve good government. Yet today, interacting with government services is often frustrating and inefficient. GovWell is building the AI operating system transforming how governments serve communities, starting with local agencies.

GovWell replaces legacy software for municipalities and counties, empowering public servants to radically streamline public services and cut internal processing time for permits and licenses by up to 95%.

Founded in 2023, GovWell powers 5,000+ mission-critical processes for agencies in 35+ states serving millions of residents. The company has raised $35M in funding from Insight Partners, Work-Bench, and Bienville Capital, and the team works in person at GovWell HQ in New York City. Read more about our founding story in TechCrunch.

You can hail a car in 90 seconds, bank from your phone, and chat with an AI at 2am. Then you spend a Tuesday afternoon waiting for your number to be called at the DMV.

Swap the DMV for a permit office, a licensing board, a planning department — the experience is the same, and it repeats in more than 21,000 municipalities across this country. Trust in government has fallen from 77% to under 20% over the last 60 years, and most people don't form that opinion from the news — they form it in the permit office, on hold, waiting on an inspection that takes 6 weeks to schedule.

We don't think that's abstract or unfixable. We think it's mostly a technology problem, and technology problems can be solved by great engineers.

GovWell is hiring Senior Software Engineers to help build the platform doing that work today, at real scale: 5,000+ permitting and licensing processes running live across 35+ states, with customers reporting processing time cuts of up to 90%. Building departments that used to spend 70% of their time on data entry are spending that time on the work that actually needs a human — reviewing complex plans, meeting with residents, advising developers.

You'll work across the stack, building the kind of deeply configurable system that lets one platform serve thousands of municipalities with different rules, without collapsing into unmaintainable one-off logic for each one.

This role reports directly to our CTO and Co-Founder, Ben Cohen.

We have a hybrid work culture that combines regular in-person collaboration at our New York City office (3+ days per week) with flexibility to work remotely.

• A mission that matters: Building AI-powered products to fix outdated government systems isn’t just a technical challenge—it’s a historic opportunity to improve our foundational relationship with government and ensure trillions of tax dollars result in high quality services. WATCH: Mission & Vision with CEO & Co-Founder Troy LeCaire

• Real-world impact: GovWell’s product is the system of record for government services that affect millions of Americans. From streamlining permitting for small businesses to accelerating affordable housing development, your work will make an immediate difference.

• Join a startup in hyper-growth: We’ve found product-market fit and are scaling the business very quickly (4X ARR growth in the last year). As an early team member, you’ll learn what it takes to build a successful startup. You’ll work closely with the founders while enjoying exceptional autonomy and ownership over your work.

• Build, test, and ship full-stack features across GovWell’s platform — from intuitive resident-facing interfaces to scalable backend services that power government workflows.

• Build the configuration layer that lets one system flex correctly across thousands of different municipal setups, instead of hardcoding logic per customer.

• Take ownership of product areas end-to-end — reliable, maintainable, and performant in actual government environments.

• Use customer feedback and production data to decide what to fix next, working directly with the municipal staff and residents who depend on it.

• Contribute to technical design discussions and code review that shape how the whole engineering team builds, not just your own features.
  

• 3-5+ years of full-stack development experience building applications for enterprises and/or consumers. Strong preference for candidates who have worked in high-growth startup environments.

• You're excited to work with the latest AI models, both in the product and in your own development workflow.

• You've owned a large product area end-to-end and can point to something specific you shipped and stayed accountable for.

• Strong product instincts: you ask questions until you actually understand the customer's problem, not just the ticket description.

• You want a role with real technical variance — one week you might be in GIS edge cases, the next in fee-schedule logic, and you find that more interesting than narrower, more repetitive work.

• You align closely with our Core Values.
  

• React

• TypeScript

• Node.js

• GraphQL

• PostgreSQL

• RedwoodJS

• AWS

• OpenAI API

Compensation within the posted salary band will be commensurate with experience. All offers will include:

• Competitive base salary.

• Equity / stock options.

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance.

• 401(k) program.

• Flexible PTO.

Below: a picture of the entire GovWell team celebrating our Series A with a boat cruise on the Hudson!

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