Open role
EmpathyEngineer
Space (sp-ce.co) · Remote · Full-time
TL;DR
- —Space, an AI-native brand agency, is hiring an Empathy Engineer to own the systems that keep a radically candid, senior-only team kind: including the Empathy Engine, the agent that catches heated messages before they land.
- —The role treats culture as infrastructure, not events: no posters, no pizza budgets, no annual surveys, and a public commitment about where care tooling ends and surveillance would begin.
- —It's a builder's job with a people-first brief: part conversation design, part systems engineering, part repair work.
- —Applying is three questions in a short form: one piece you shipped and now hate, the best idea you ever cut, and one thing in culture that makes you jealous.
01
About Space
Space is an AI-native brand agency. Three always-on leaders, 82 on-demand specialists, zero juniors. 127 agents, 362 agentic workflows, 14 tools we built ourselves. We ship brand identities, websites, campaigns, and products for funded companies in weeks: Validere got strategy, a full rebrand, and a new site in 8 weeks, lifted inbound 31%, and closed a $43M Series B on the story. We grow entirely by word of mouth, and we publish our AI rules, our hiring bar, and our pricing logic at sp-ce.co/notes, because an agency that won't tell you where AI stops is telling you it doesn't know.
02
The job
Most companies put kindness on posters. We put it in production, and production needs an owner. Space runs on radical candor across a senior-only, remote team where feedback moves fast and nobody has a title to hide behind. Candor at that speed stays kind only if the infrastructure keeps it kind: the Empathy Engine (the agent that reads the heat in a drafted Slack message and privately offers the sender the version they actually meant), the rituals that make hard feedback specific and survivable, the way humans and agents share credit and blame without the humans feeling like inputs. The Engine catches words. It doesn't understand a Tuesday. Understanding the Tuesday is this job.
You'll own all of it: part conversation designer, part systems engineer, part the person who notices that two people have quietly stopped tagging each other. The most advanced thing about this company should be how it treats the people in it, and that's an engineering claim, which means someone has to be accountable for it shipping.
03
What you'll do
Own the Empathy Engine: its judgment, its misses, its tone, and its hard refusal to ever become a monitor.
Build the rituals candor needs: feedback that arrives specific, fast, and survivable, between seniors who will work together again Monday.
Instrument culture health without surveillance, and publish where that line sits so everyone can hold you to it.
Design the human-agent seams: how credit, blame, and handoffs work when half your colleagues are software and all of the accountability is human.
Repair things. When candor lands wrong or a thread goes cold, you're the person who notices early and moves first.
Delete the need for culture theater: the posters, the pizza budget, the annual survey nobody believes.
04
What you won't do
Plan the holiday party. Warmth here is infrastructure, and infrastructure works on the days without cake.
Run an engagement survey. If you need an anonymous annual form to learn the team's state, the systems already failed.
Write values posters. The values are written, argued with out loud, and the arguing is the culture.
Surveil. The day this role reads someone's messages without their knowledge is the day the role stops existing, and we'd rather it not exist than exist that way.
Manage juniors, sit in status meetings, log timesheets, or build spec work for pitches. None of those survive here.
05
Who you are
A builder with a people-first brief: you've shipped tools, bots, or systems, and the ones you're proudest of made someone's week quieter.
Fluent in both literatures: you've finished the Radical Candor book and a model card, and you can say what each one gets wrong.
Level 4 or above on our published AI Fluency Ladder, because the empathy here runs on systems you'll be rebuilding.
A repairer. You've walked toward a conflict on purpose, early, and left it smaller than you found it.
Precise about feelings. "The team is frustrated" is a guess; you deal in who, about what, since when, and what would help.
06
Who you aren't
An HR-theater veteran looking for a rebrand. If your instinct under pressure is a policy and a form, we'll frustrate you weekly.
Someone who thinks kind means soft. Kind and clear are the same thing here, and vague is the cruel one.
Surveillance-curious. If dashboards of private behavior sound efficient to you, stop reading.
Level 2 on the ladder: someone who ships whatever the model returns. That's worse than not using AI at all, and we said so in print.
07 · No resume required
How to apply
No cover letter. No 90-page portfolio PDF. No resume upload, even. The application is three questions:
One piece of work you shipped and now hate, with the reason. Two hundred words max.
The best idea you ever cut, and why it was right to cut it.
One thing in culture right now that makes you jealous.
Use AI to answer if you like; we do. We'll be able to tell whether you reviewed it.
Comeargue.
Yes, this job description was drafted with AI. A named human rewrote it, cut a third of it, and will defend every line on a call. That's the entire model, and it's hiring.
Frequently asked questions
It's what the people function looks like when it's built instead of administered: systems and rituals with an owner, engineering standards, and no forms where a conversation should be.
It reads the message you're drafting, for you, before you send it, and offers you a rewrite privately. A mirror, never a microphone. Keeping that sentence true is half this job.
Both, unapologetically. The role is real and open; the posting argues the model, because the model is the job.
Because the seat is sized to the person in it. You'll hear a real range in the first conversation, before you've invested anything beyond the three answers.
A named human reads all three answers. If they're real, we call you.