Notchio 0.1.0 · Careers

Work on
the notch.

These roles are for people who will ship Notchio itself — the Windows island, the tools inside it, and the site that gets it onto a PC. Remote. Small team. Lifetime product, not a growth dashboard.

01Remote · Full-time · Async-firstFull-stack engineerYou own the loop between notchio.app and the Windows app: licensing, downloads, payments, and the small APIs the notch depends on.

Notchio is a lifetime product, not a SaaS dashboard. The site exists for one job: get the right build onto someone's PC and keep it activated with the least fuss possible. You own everything between a visitor landing on notchio.app and the island lighting up on Windows 11.

That means the Next.js site, the licensing service behind it, the purchase return flow, the installer handoff, the update check the app phones home to, and the handful of network edges the island needs — weather, lyrics, currency rates — built so the app stays local-first and the site stays boring in the best way.

What you'll own

  • Own activation end to end: key issue, device seats, validation, deactivate and re-seat, and the success page people land on after paying.
  • Own the installer handoff: direct EXE download, Microsoft Store path, versioned update.json, and update checks that never nag at the wrong moment.
  • Build and guard the site's small APIs: feedback intake, careers intake, license validate/activate/deactivate, with rate limits that fail open gracefully.
  • Keep the network edges the island uses fast and private: caching, graceful offline states, no tracking beyond what support actually needs.
  • Keep the hidden ops desk honest: activations, seats, earnings estimate, inbox, and now applications — enough signal to run the business, nothing more.

Stack you'll touch

  • Next.js 16 + React 19 + TypeScript
  • Supabase (Postgres + RLS) + service-role writes
  • Vercel hosting, no-store APIs where it matters
  • Stripe-style purchase return, license-key crypto

What we're looking for

  • Shipped a real Next.js + TypeScript product to production and lived with the support inbox after.
  • Comfortable with Postgres, RLS, and migrations you can roll forward without downtime.
  • You think in failure modes: rate limits, malformed bodies, revoked seats, offline PCs — and you write the unhappy path first.
  • You write boring, readable code. Small diffs, clear names, tests for the load-bearing bits.
  • You have actually installed and used Notchio on Windows 11 before you apply.

Nice to have

  • Packaging or auto-update experience (Windows installers, Store submissions, update feeds).
  • Rust or native-Windows basics so you can meet the shell engineer halfway.
  • Email deliverability, receipts, and refund flows without the drama.

Compensation

No fixed band. We're a small team selling a lifetime product, and we'd rather pay the right person right than fit someone into a ladder. Tell us your expectation in the form — if you're the right candidate, we'll make the number work.

How hiring works

  1. Application with basic details + confirmation you've used Notchio.
  2. Product walkthrough: you share your screen, open the notch, and tell us what you'd change about the site-to-PC loop.
  3. One small paid trial on the real backlog — usually a licensing edge or an installer papercut.
  4. Offer. No whiteboards, no take-home marathons.
Apply for this role
02Remote · Full-time · Async-firstRust engineerYou work on the Windows shell of Notchio itself: the always-on-top notch, placement, and the native glue that makes the island feel local.

The notch is not a skin over a web page. It's an always-on-top Windows citizen that has to behave: never steal focus, never show in Alt+Tab, sit exactly in the taskbar gap on any DPI, hide the moment a game or fullscreen app takes over, and wake instantly when the cursor rests on it.

You own that shell in Rust — the overlay window, the placement engine, the native bridges for media, audio, privacy lights, clipboard, and files — and the seam where the native shell hands off to the island UI.

What you'll own

  • Own the overlay window: WS_EX_TOPMOST without focus theft, click-through vs interactive hit-testing, Alt+Tab and taskbar exclusion, per-monitor DPI in physical pixels.
  • Own placement: taskbar-gap docking, multi-monitor moves, fullscreen detection and hide, side-dock and flipped layouts at real sizes.
  • Own the native bridges the island depends on: SMTC media (play/pause/seek/volume, art, timelines), audio endpoint mute and volume, mic/camera privacy state, clipboard history on this PC, file-drop as real Windows drags.
  • Own app lifecycle: tray icon, single-instance, autostart, crash-safe restarts, and update application without losing the user's island state.
  • Profile like you mean it: cold start, idle CPU, wake latency, and memory when the island sits open all day.

Stack you'll touch

  • Rust (stable) + windows / windows-rs bindings
  • Layered/transparent top-level window, DWM-aware rendering
  • SMTC, Core Audio endpoints, Win32 shell + tray APIs
  • WebView-based island bridge with a tight native message surface

What we're looking for

  • Shipped production Rust on Windows — you know your way around HWNDs, message loops, COM threading, and why DPI lies to you.
  • You can reason about focus, z-order, and input routing without guessing, and you test on real hardware, not just a VM.
  • You read ETW/perf traces before you add threads, and you delete code more often than you add it.
  • You keep native surfaces small and typed: every bridge call is versioned, fallible, and logged without leaking user content.
  • You have actually installed and used Notchio on Windows 11 before you apply.

Nice to have

  • Audio/media stack depth: endpoint switching, exclusive-mode quirks, Bluetooth device churn.
  • Installer and servicing experience: MSIX/Store vs EXE, elevation boundaries, per-user vs per-machine.
  • A feel for motion and input latency — hover dwell, leave delay, 60fps open transitions on integrated GPUs.

Compensation

No fixed band. Native Windows work this fiddly is rare, and we won't pretend a spreadsheet knows its price. Tell us your expectation in the form — if you're the right candidate, we'll make the number work.

How hiring works

  1. Application with basic details + confirmation you've used Notchio.
  2. Product walkthrough: you run the notch on your PC and walk us through placement, focus, and one native bridge you'd rebuild.
  3. One small paid trial on the real backlog — usually a placement edge or a media-bridge papercut.
  4. Offer. No whiteboards, no take-home marathons.
Apply for this role
03Remote · Full-time · Async-firstFrontend engineerYou shape what people see when they rest the cursor on the notch: the pill, the island, and every tool pane inside it.

Notchio lives or dies in the first 300 milliseconds: the cursor rests on the notch, the pill breathes open into the island, and fifteen tools are suddenly one hover away without ever feeling crowded. You own that entire surface.

That means the collapsed pill and every idle state it can show, the island chrome and tray, all sixteen-plus tool panes, the three looks — Classic, Halo, Deck — and the motion language that keeps the whole thing quiet instead of showy.

What you'll own

  • Own the pill-to-island moment: idle states (clock, now playing, focus timer, countdown to the next meeting, notices), the open transition, and the leave behaviour that never strands the user.
  • Own the tool panes people live in: media with follow-the-playhead lyrics, calendar with green Join buttons, weather, clipboard you can drag out, file tray as real file drags, notes, scratchpad, system, usage, tokens, and the header row (clock, emoji, camera, Bluetooth).
  • Own the looks system: Classic, Halo, and Deck variants, module order and hide settings, and layouts that match real content sizes instead of fixed boxes.
  • Own the motion contract: hover dwell to open, leave delay to close, spring curves that settle, marquee and equalizer details that pause when they should.
  • Keep it fast and legible: virtualized lists, masked overflow, keyboard paths, and text that never clips in German or truncates a meeting title that matters.

Stack you'll touch

  • React 19 + TypeScript + modern CSS (no heavy UI kit)
  • Island bridge state: typed messages, optimistic local updates
  • Looks tokens, container queries, and motion tuned per layout
  • Accessibility baked in: focus rings, reduced-motion, keyboard-first tray

What we're looking for

  • A portfolio of dense, live UI — not landing pages. Show us the gnarliest panel, timeline, or inspector you've shipped.
  • CSS you can defend: layout without hacks, overflow that never lies, motion that serves readability.
  • You sweat the details other people scroll past: tabular numerals in timers, 10-minute Join states, lyrics that lead the vocal instead of lagging it.
  • You test with a trackpad, a keyboard, and a 125%-scale laptop screen — because that's where Notchio lives.
  • You have actually installed and used Notchio on Windows 11 before you apply.

Nice to have

  • Canvas or SVG chops: rings, waveforms, seven-day charts, sparklines with honest empty states.
  • i18n and a11y depth: screen-reader labels for live regions, focus traps that don't trap.
  • A past life in design systems — tokens, variants, and saying no to the fourth shade of grey.

Compensation

No fixed band. Great interface work is the product here, not the polish on top of it. Tell us your expectation in the form — if you're the right candidate, we'll make the number work.

How hiring works

  1. Application with basic details + confirmation you've used Notchio.
  2. Product walkthrough: you open your island and critique two panes and one transition like you already work here.
  3. One small paid trial on the real backlog — usually a pill state or a tray-tool papercut.
  4. Offer. No whiteboards, no take-home marathons.
Apply for this role
Apply

Tell us who you are.

Basic details only. Before you send anything, we ask whether you've already used Notchio — interviews start from the product, not a whiteboard.

Have you used Notchio?

Interviews are based on the product. We expect you to have run the notch on Windows 11 — hover the pill, open the island, and try a few tools — before you apply.