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dannycastonguayon Ask HN: Who is hiring? (November 2025)

Also looking for: Junior AI Engineer / Data Scientist | Australia (Remote or Melbourne) | Full-time

Early-career role building + shipping real production ML. 1–3 yrs ML/Python/data pipelines. Cloud exp. (AWS/GCP/Azure) a plus. Remote-friendly across East Aus. Salary 100–115K AUD. Work closely with Singapore lead; real impact + fast learning curve.

Senior Data Scientist | USA (Remote) | Full-time | 150K USD + commission

Lead applied AI delivery + enterprise client conversations. 6–10 yrs in ML/DS/AI product work; MLOps + strategy skills. Consulting or enterprise background preferred. Master’s/PhD optional. Looking for polished stakeholder presence (ex-FAANG/MBB vibes welcome). ___

bld.ai | Junior AI Engineer / Data Scientist | USA (Remote) | Full-time | 100K USD + commission

1–3 yrs ML engineering or DS, Python + pipelines, cloud exposure. Comfortable async + independent; startup pace. Growth path to technical lead.

priscilla.mariana@bld.ai

dannycastonguayon Ask HN: Who is hiring? (November 2025)

Lead client-facing AI + data science projects for enterprise clients. 6–10 yrs applied ML/AI experience, strong MLOps + data strategy background. Consulting or enterprise experience required. Salary 125–140K SGD. Master’s/PhD nice but not required.

Email priscilla.mariana@bld.ai

dannycastonguayon [dead]

Full-Stack / App Developer (Client-Facing) Location: USA (Houston, Chicago, or Bay Area, CA) Compensation: 110–125K USD + commission

Role Summary: We’re looking for an application developer who thrives at the intersection of software engineering and client delivery. You’ll design, build, and deploy production-grade applications—often integrating AI or data-driven components—and work closely with enterprise clients on-site (~50% travel). You’ll collaborate with our AI and data science teams to bring robust, user-ready systems to life.

Requirements: 1. 4–7 years of experience in full-stack or application development. 2. Strong proficiency in Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, and modern frameworks (e.g., React, FastAPI, Node.js, or Flask). 3. Experience deploying to cloud environments (AWS, GCP, or Azure). 4. Ability to translate business requirements into maintainable, scalable code. 5. Excellent client-facing communication and collaboration skills. 6. Willingness to travel up to 50% for on-site work with U.S. clients.

Ideal Profile: A hands-on builder with a consulting mindset—comfortable both coding independently and representing the team in client environments. Prior experience in AI product development, data-intensive systems, or enterprise integrations is a plus.

dannycastonguayon [dead]

Junior AI Engineer / Data Scientist Location: USA broadly 100K USD + commission Role Summary: Support the development and deployment of AI systems, focusing on experimentation, data processing, and performance optimization. You’ll work closely with the Singapore lead to execute model training, testing, and integration tasks in production environments.

Requirements: 1. 1–3 years experience in machine learning, Python, and data pipelines. 2. Exposure to cloud environments (AWS, GCP, or Azure). 3. Comfortable working independently and asynchronously with remote teams. 4. Good communication skills and disciplined execution. 5. Bachelor’s in Computer Science, Data Science, or related field.

Ideal Profile: Early-career data scientist or ML engineer with a startup or research background; eager to learn, ship fast, and grow into a lead role.

dannycastonguayon [dead]

Senior Data Scientist Location: USA broadly 150K USD + commission Role Summary: Lead client-facing AI engagements, represent the firm in discussions with enterprise clients, and oversee technical delivery across applied AI and data science projects. You’ll translate business problems into practical AI solutions while guiding a small, distributed engineering team.

Requirements: 1. 6–10 years in applied machine learning, data science, or AI product development. 2. Proven experience with enterprise clients or consulting environments. 3. Strong communication and presentation skills. 4. Technical depth in model design, MLOps, and data strategy. 5. Master’s or PhD preferred but not required.

Ideal Profile: Ex-FAANG, Ex-MBB, or similar background; confident, articulate, credible in front of senior stakeholders.

dannycastonguayon US vs. Google amicus curiae brief of Y Combinator in support of plaintiffs [pdf]

Why do antitrust proposals always suggest breaking up Google by function—Search, Ads, Gmail, etc.? What if, instead, we cloned the whole company?

Start by splitting Google into two identical, full-stack companies, each with all the core products. A year later, split them again. Over time, you get 4 or 8 Googles competing across the board.

Employees could be assigned algorithmically to avoid chaos. This feels more like cell division than amputation—preserving the synergies while creating competition.

dannycastonguayon Ask HN: Who is hiring? (May 2025)

https://github.com/dannycastonguay/learneverything/blob/main...

Position: Swift Developer

You will: 1. Build in Swift. 2. Creating fluid swipe and transition animations. 3. Optimizing data structures to minimize server load times by predictive preloading and caching. 4. Integrate OpenAI APIs into a Swift front-end (I already deployed a prototype that works). 5. Implement fast and reliable peer-to-peer, one-on-one video streaming. 6. Implement Web3 payment integrations on CELO Level 2 blockchain, including Apple Pay token purchasing.

I will: - Pay you $1,000/month while we aren't funded. - Meet w you 30 minutes/day to review, problem solve, and plan your 7-8 hours of work. 4PM Singapore time. - Use V0 by Vercel prototype as design reference.

Attributes: - Work hard. See: https://blog.dannycastonguay.com/on-working-hard/ - Be an owner: https://blog.dannycastonguay.com/on-being-an-owner/ - Accept that life sucks: https://blog.dannycastonguay.com/life-sucks/ - Don't miss important details. - Be ethical. - Nice to have: Codeforces rating above 2000.

How to apply: go to bld.ai, start a project, add me as a client d@bld.ai.

dannycastonguayon The surprising connection between after-hours work and decreased productivity

Agreed. It's important to put enough effort that you find meaning in your work, but not so much that it ruins your wellbeing. Here's a rough algorithm that works for me:

1. Estimate the hours you think it will take to complete a task.

2. Double it and let the team know you did that.

3. Do the work well including good documentation.

4. Assess your progress when you've spent 50% of the planned hours. If you're not at least halfway done, avoid overworking. Instead, seek help within the team and descope.

5. Utilise any extra time for learning new and useful skills, if you finish ahead of schedule.

Cheers

dannycastonguayon Ask HN: Could you share your personal blog here?

https://blog.dannycastonguay.com/

When I find myself repeating the same topic, I write it down for future reference.

Writing is enjoyable, with the added anticipation that my children will read it someday (with mild embarrassment).

dannycastonguayon Ask HN: Who is hiring? (July 2021)

Product Manager | bld.ai | https://bld.ai/ | Remote | Full-time

We are a design + dev shop. We bill our clients hourly in USD. We give all IP to our clients and are long-term partners with a dozen well funded startups (e.g., backed by a16z, YC, etc.) and multiple Fortune 100 companies. We are 3 years old, employee owned, and 100+ employees.

Our teams are passionate about UX. We practice test-driven development. We are transparent about finances and compensation. We want diversity by design. We systematically invest the majority of our profit in recruiting, training, and mentoring each other.

Competitive salary, benefits, paid vacation, equity, and sick leave.

More details: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vSiZGF7Z6Kx1lznq...

To apply, please send an email to hn@bld.ai.

dannycastonguayon Ask HN: Who is hiring? (April 2021)

bld.ai - https://bld.ai/ | Remote | Full-time | UX designer, software engineer, product manager

We are a design + dev shop. We bill our clients hourly. We give all IP to our clients. We are long term partners with a dozen well funded startups (e.g., backed by a16z, YC, etc.), an energy super major, a giant tech, and more. We are 3 years old, now 80 employees, and growing at 100% every 9 months.

Passionated about UX. Test driven development. Transparent about finances and compensation. Diversity by design. Employee owned. We systematically invest the majority of our profit in recruiting, training, and mentoring each other.

Email: join@bld.ai

dannycastonguayon Show HN: Clerk – all of user management as-a-service, not just authentication

"Batteries included" Django is a no brainer for a lot of use cases. True. But clerk.dev seems to be targeting teams that use (javascript) microframeworks. They are building something people want and the pricing seems to scale well up to 100K users. If you have millions of users, I'm sure their enterprise team will give better deals than $0.05 / MAUs.

dannycastonguayon How Did Vim Become So Popular?

(Helpful tip) map caps lock to escape: https://vim.fandom.com/wiki/Avoid_the_escape_key

dannycastonguayon Moxie, a Social Robot That Helps Kids with Social-Emotional Learning

My anecdotal evidence based on my own kids (3 of them) is that despite having (empathetic) parents, siblings, grand parents, friends, pets, and more, they still sometimes find comfort in material things like a stuffed toy animals, blankets, or figurines. I see Moxie as an experiment in making a more interactive stuff toy rather than a replacement for living things, and I'd probably try the toy for a week if it was less than $200.

dannycastonguayon How Figma's Multiplayer Technology Works

I wonder if your concern would be addressed if Figma allowed creating a private branch that you could merge back later.

dannycastonguayon LeBron James school that was considered an experiment is showing promise

It's a moment of pride that this country has citizens like him. It reflects well on the values of some of the celebrities like him, and hopefully it is inspiring others, thanks also in part to good journalism. It also didn't happen without the efforts of the kids who had to believe it was possible, put in the hours, and demonstrated proficiency on the tests.

dannycastonguayon Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Labor Demand [pdf]

The McKinsey Global Institute has published/invested a lot on the topic and have a good set of podcasts: https://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/overview/the-new-world-of-work-...

dannycastonguayon Sonic: Fast, lightweight and schemaless search back end in Rust

Curious to know if you considered https://www.algolia.com/ as well?

dannycastonguayon Repl.it GFX: Native graphics development in the browser

Hey! Thanks for asking. I carry a Pixelbook around the house to read the news/answer emails and, although Linux is on it on, I just find it easier to browse to Repl.it.

Let's be clear that for a 5 year old, being able to substitute numbers in (+ 2 3) and seeing the results is displayed on the screen is pretty cool. And for my 3-year-old, just typing his name (after I tell him which keys to press) is magical.

dannycastonguayon Amazon to Launch Mobile Ads, in a Threat to Google and Facebook

Maybe you have something to teach me.

Are you not convinced that Google Search, DDG, Gmail, Facebook, WhatsApp, Snapchat are all "good" products in the eye of many people? As far as I can tell, all of those products are paid for by sponsors.

dannycastonguayon Repl.it GFX: Native graphics development in the browser

I just came here to say thank you for doing this team. When I wanted to teach my 5 year old how to type and do basic math, I did it in clojure using Repl.it

I may have biased it, but she found the experience more engaging than MIT Scratch (which is also very good).

When kids and newbies engage with a product so easily (think git before github), you suddenly vastly increase the userbase.

dannycastonguayon San Francisco considers banning cashless Amazon stores

The deontological argument is that there is a rule requiring vendors to accept cash, whereas there isn't a rule limiting the max price they can charge.

I, too, find it easier to apply consequentialism, but bureaucracies work well when they have clear rules.

dannycastonguayon Amazon to Launch Mobile Ads, in a Threat to Google and Facebook

In practice, ads are there because sponsors are ready to pay for something good that consumers have no desire to pay for.

Thank you, advertisers, for paying for Gmail and all those good products.

dannycastonguayon Atlassian built a $20B dollar company with no sales team

Came here looking for this comment. There was a time where their product was a selling point.

Bugzilla -> Redmine -> Jira -> Trello/Asana -> Gitlab -> ...

I'd say things are slowly getting better.

dannycastonguayon Hacker News Meetups

WPB yes!

dannycastonguayon A tiny Swiss company thinks it can help stop climate change

Answer: Yes, these people need jobs and there is a lot of money to be made legally drilling offshore oil wells off the coast of Guyana[1].

Consider coal, the poster child. Blaming the coal producing states[2] might feel good, but it's not very effective. Personally, I prefer to have a shared global responsibility mindset because I too consume goods that are made in China, where ~50% of the coal is burned. How do I sleep at night? Quite well because I'm often exhausted from startup life + BJJ + kids :-)

As a citizen in a democratic country, if you want to affect change, policy seems to be the way to go. As far as environmental problems go in the US, the boundary between federal and state is not well defined[3] and most recently the federal government seem content with letting the states take more of the burden. A few (humble) thought starters for US citizens would include:

  A. Learn how much your state is burning[4] and what your governor is doing about it
  B. Find out about organizations and lobbying groups that align with your ideals
  C. Vote with your money[5], and vote in the election

---

  1: https://corporate.exxonmobil.com/en/Locations/Guyana/Guyana-project-overview#explorationWellsDrilledInTheStabroekBlock
  2: https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=69&t=2
  3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_and_state_environmental_relations
  4: https://www.americangeosciences.org/critical-issues/faq/which-states-are-largest-producers-and-consumers-coal
  5: https://lobbyit.com/how-state-and-fe-lobbying-differ/

edit: format

dannycastonguayon The UAE’s secret hacking team of U.S. mercenaries

"In general, we can say that Persian women enjoyed power, influence, and economic opportunities. They were involved in the military and owned businesses, and held the same jobs as men. Some women never married or had children, but this wasn't seen as a problem. However, Ancient Persian society was still patriarchal, and for the most part, men held higher positions than women.

One of the reasons that Ancient Persians held women in high regard might have been their religion. Zoroastrianism was the dominant religion, and its ideology stressed that men and women were equals. Naturally, this would shape the worldview of Ancient Persians, and we can say that overall women were seen as important figures in society."

https://study.com/academy/lesson/women-in-ancient-persia-roy...

Funny fun fact about Zoroastrianism: "British musician Freddie Mercury, lead singer for the rock band Queen, was of Parsi descent. Mercury, born Farrokh Bulsara, practiced Zoroastrianism."

dannycastonguayon South Koreans lock themselves up to escape prison of daily life

"GrossFit".

dannycastonguayon The Online Gig Economy’s ‘Race to the Bottom’

It took me a few years (University?) to understand better the concepts of job creation (macroeconomics) and of zero-sum (game theory). I assume many readers (maybe even the author) of the article will not have an understanding of these notions either and therefore will not arrive at your conclusions.

Instead of "hating", maybe we could acknowledge the problem and try to come up with a solution? Not that I'm able to come up with a good one.

A bit off topic, but when I see adults who lack a certain concept, I take note of teaching my kids about that concept. For instance, I want to teach my kids the concept of "velocity of money" by adopting an internal currency (e.g., stuffed toys), where you can "spend" by asking a favor, and "earn" by doing a favor. Over time, my wife and I might also increase the pool of "money" whenever someone does something especially nice. No blockchain required ;-)