Help build the gateway companies trust with their AI traffic.
Tessarac is a small team. Today we run the AI Cost Optimizer, the gateway that routes, caches, governs and meters every call a company makes to AI models. Next is a security platform: identity, secrets, privileged access, endpoint and cloud security under one bill. We hire engineers who care about correctness, simplicity, and work a customer can verify.
What we believe
Size isn't the goal. Needing the size is.
Being a 200-person company isn't the problem — it's a fine outcome if the platform and the business have genuinely grown enough to need 200 people. The problem is carrying headcount the work doesn't require. So we hire few people, expect a lot from each of them, and pay accordingly.
- Size isn't the enemy. A 200-person company is great if the platform and the company have actually grown into needing 200 people. The problem was never the number — it's having people you don't need.
- We expect a very high level of efficiency from everyone we hire, and we pay for that efficiency rather than for headcount.
- We pay for top-tier talent, above market rate, not at it — because we expect the best: people who push boundaries, think on their feet, act like adults, and don't need to be managed or micromanaged.
- Our hiring managers ask themselves one question above the rest: would I want to work for this person? If the answer is yes, alongside everything else we look for, that's generally who gets hired. We won't hire someone we wouldn't want to work for ourselves.
- We put real pride and effort into the user experience of what we build. Software people actually want to use isn't a nice-to-have here — it's part of the job.
How we hire
One technical interview. Maybe a second. Never a take-home.
We don't run live-coding tests, take-home assignments, or on-site loops. Our process is exactly two steps: a one-hour technical interview, and — for some candidates — a one-hour personality interview. That's the entire process.
- One-hour technical interview — we talk through what you've built, how you reason about trade-offs, and the problems we're actually solving. No whiteboard, no live coding.
- A potential one-hour personality interview — for some candidates, a second hour to make sure we'd genuinely want to work together day to day.
- No take-home assignment. We don't ask candidates to do unpaid work to prove themselves.
- No on-site. Two conversations, at most, is the whole process — not a filter before the real one.
Open roles
No open roles right now.
You can still apply. Tell us what you've built and we'll consider you when a role opens that fits. We read every application.
Received
Thank you. Your application is with our hiring team.
We read every application. If we'd like to talk, we'll email you at .
Rather write to us directly?
Email hr@tessarac.com with what you've built and your résumé. It reaches the same people as the form.