Founding Growth Lead

Public referral bonus: Introduce us to a candidate who joins Steel, and we'll send you $5,000

About Steel

Steel is building open-source browser infrastructure for AI agents and apps. We make it easy for developers to ship AI products that interact with the web using our Sessions API.

With over 6,000 GitHub stars, dozens of paying customers, and millions of sessions served monthly, we grew our platform 50x in 2025 purely through word-of-mouth and our open-source community. Backed by world-class investors, we're building a small, talent-dense team that's shaping the future of how humans interact with the internet.

More on the problems we're solving: https://docs.steel.dev/overview/intro-to-steel

The Role

We're looking for our first growth hire to turn Steel's organic momentum into systematic, repeatable user and revenue growth.

We think great developer tool growth comes down to three things: developers discovering you when they have the problem, experiencing immediate value, and wanting to tell others. You'll own growth across the full funnel, from driving awareness among AI engineers to optimizing activation and expansion.

Our GTM motion is product-led growth combined with product-led sales. Most users discover Steel, sign up, and upgrade through self-service. For enterprise customers, we step in to assist them with their evaluation, security review, and procurement processes. You'll work directly with the CEO and our founding engineering and growth team to experiment relentlessly across channels, create content that resonates with developers, and build the systems that scale what's working.

This isn't a traditional growth marketing role. You'll need to be technical enough to write code, ship demos, and engage with developers authentically. If running an influencer outreach campaign one day and launching a demo app you built on Steel over the weekend the next doesn't excite you, this isn't the role. We work hard, move fast, and expect the same intensity from our team. Late nights and weekend work are part of building something exceptional.

This role can start as contract-to-hire or go straight to full-time for the right person.

Sample projects could include

• Building our content machine: turn AI agent experiments and research into high-value blog posts, demos, and technical content that establishes Steel as the authority on browser automation

• Running influencer campaigns with AI engineers and developer advocates to amplify our reach in technical communities

• Running fast experiments across channels, messaging, value props, and ICP to figure out what actually drives developer adoption and conversion

• Executing launches for new features and open-source releases that create momentum and bring thousands of developers to Steel

• Working with engineers to optimize our self-serve funnel through relentless experimentation on activation, conversion, and retention to turn freemium into paying customers

• Organizing events, dinners, and community gatherings that turn users into advocates and create deeper relationships with key customers

• Building our presence across developer communities (X, Reddit, HN, Discord) with S-tier shit posts

You could be a great Founding Growth Lead if you

• Have 4+ years growing developer tools, API products, or infrastructure companies through product-led motion

• Are technical. You understand what Steel does, can write code, build demos, and engage with developers on their level

• Understand the importance of content in modern growth and can create compelling technical content that developers actually want to read

• Run experiments relentlessly and prioritize growth loops over linear channels. You think about compounding acquisition where one cohort brings the next

• Move fast and have extreme bias for action. You ship, measure, learn, and iterate without waiting for perfect information

• Have good taste and understand what resonates with developers across platforms. You're active in technical communities and know what's signal vs. noise

• Friends describe you as cracked

Nice-to-haves

• Ex-founder experience

• Product-led growth experience at companies like Vercel, Supabase, Render, or similar developer tool companies

• Experience growing a product from pre-revenue to $1M+ ARR

• Have written technical content that developers actually want to read

Our Values

User First, Always

The developers building on Steel and their end-users come first. Our infrastructure is mission-critical to some of the most important AI apps. We succeed only when our users succeed.

Open Source at Heart

We build in the open and contribute back to the community. Open source isn't just a strategy for us, it's fundamental to how we create better software and push the entire field forward.

Move with Speed & Urgency

Speed is our business strategy. We make quick, deliberate decisions, learn rapidly through action, and stay intensely focused on what moves the needle.

Build for the Long Term

Infrastructure is a decades-long game, and we want to go the distance. We tackle building enduring services the only way we know how: Gradatim Ferociter.

Be Obsessed

Beyond the point that most would consider reasonable. We're obsessive about API design, performance, and reliability, not because we have to be, but because we want to be. If you consider your craft as an extension of yourself, you'll fit right in.

Show, Don't Tell

Start with the experience we want developers to have—the docs they'll read, the demos that'll make them say "wow." Then work backwards until the implementation matches the magic.

What We Offer

• Own the growth engine for what will power the next million AI agents

• Pour fuel on fire: leverage strong organic momentum (6K+ stars, 70% MoM growth) to scale systematically

• High Impact: Founding team member who becomes the leader of this function as we scale

• Founding team-level equity as employee #5-7

• Work with innovative AI companies transforming healthcare, supply chain, accounting, and more

• Shape a category: browser infrastructure for AI agents

Benefits: Competitive salary, health and dental insurance for you and your family, regular team events and off-sites, brand-new laptop setup, gym membership subsidies.

P.S. Don't feel like you need to check every box! If you're excited about the challenges described and love building/growing developer tools, we want to hear from you. We value creativity and enthusiasm just as much as experience.