Desktop Engineer

About the company

Town is a startup building personalized AI assistants (called Townies) that connect to users' email and calendar to proactively suggest and automate tasks.

About this role

ABOUT TOWN We're an applied AI company building a powerful assistant that makes it easy for anyone to create and use software in their everyday work. Town starts from who you are — it builds a persistent model of you (your voice, judgment, relationships, priorities) and does real work on your behalf across every tool you use: email, calendar, docs, Slack, CRM. It doesn't wait to be prompted. It observes, learns, and acts. We most recently raised a $55M Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Forerunner Ventures and continued support from First Round Capital, Alt Capital, and Conviction — plus angels including Adam D'Angelo, Soleio Cuervo, and Immad Akhund. ABOUT THE ROLE Town is most powerful when it's ambient — always there, aware of what you're working on, one keystroke away. The native macOS app is how that happens. We're looking for a Desktop Engineer to own Town's macOS client: a fast, deeply-integrated, always-on app that lives in your menu bar, understands the context around you, and acts the moment you need it. You'll own the native client end to end — architecture, OS integration, performance, and the release pipeline — and set the craft bar for what a Town desktop experience feels like. The bar is someone who has shipped a real Mac app that people loved to use, and sweats the details that make native software feel effortless. WHAT YOU'LL DO - Build and own Town's native macOS app in Swift, SwiftUI, and AppKit — architecture, features, and polish. - Go deep on the OS: menu-bar and background agents, global shortcuts, notifications, EventKit, and the Accessibility APIs that let Town understand and act across other apps. - Make an always-on client that's genuinely fast and light — low memory, low battery, no jank. - Own the release pipeline: code signing, notarization, sandboxing/entitlements, crash reporting, and seamless auto-update. - Handle sensitive user data on-device with the security and privacy it deserves, in partnership with our security work. - Work closely with the backend and AI teams to bring Town's agent to the desktop natively. - Set the craft and performance bar for the desktop experience — and lay the groundwork for future platforms. YOU MIGHT THRIVE HERE IF YOU... - Have extensive experience building native macOS (and/or iOS) applications, with depth in Swift. - Are fluent in both AppKit and SwiftUI and know when to reach for each. - Have worked below the UI layer: OS-level APIs, background processes, IPC/XPC, notifications, accessibility. - Care about performance and polish - Have shipped and owned a Mac app end to end, including signing, notarization, and updates. - Want to own a product surface from zero and move at startup speed doing it. LOCATION In-person in San Francisco's Financial District, five days a week. Everyone is here to do their best work and make this product a success.