z0.ai is an early-stage startup building a platform to help non-technical users adopt AI by making AI usage visible within organizations. They aim to allow power users to become role models and facilitate upskilling rather than job displacement. They are funded, have one customer live, and are actively ramping up sales.
What they want, where you stand, and the exact résumé edits to qualify.
Biggest lever: Lack of willingness/ability to relocate to NYC for full-time on-site work, which is a hard requirement for this role.
A starter prompt for Claude Code, what you'll need, and how to reach them.
You are an expert full-stack developer. Your task is to architect and implement an MVP for an AI usage visibility platform, similar to z0.ai, specifically a browser extension (Chrome/Edge) that tracks interactions with popular public LLM services (e.g., ChatGPT, Claude.ai) and a backend to store and visualize this data. Focus on secure data capture, anonymization, and a clear dashboard. Use Next.js 16 App Router for the frontend/backend API, React 19 for UI components, Tailwind v4 for styling, and Neon Postgres for the database. The browser extension should inject a content script to detect user input and LLM responses on specific domains (e.g., chat.openai.com). The backend should expose an API endpoint for the extension to send anonymized usage logs (timestamp, service used, input/output token counts if detectable, an anonymized user ID). The dashboard should display aggregate usage statistics, top services used, and usage trends over time. Implement a basic authentication layer for the dashboard. Your MVP should include: 1) A functional browser extension that captures basic usage data for ChatGPT. 2) A Next.js API route to receive this data. 3) A Neon Postgres schema for usage logs. 4) A dashboard page showing total usage counts and a simple time-series chart. Prioritize security and privacy by design. Provide all necessary code, database schemas, and instructions to deploy.
The core audience for z0.ai, enterprises looking to track AI usage and upskill employees, could be interested in 'ai-usage-monitor' for individual tracking, or 'lms-platform' / 'adept' for structured AI upskilling content and delivery.
z0.ai | Full Time | Founding Engineer | On Site 5 days a week | NYC | $140-$180k USD + equity We're helping non technical users adopt AI by making usage visible. Power users become role models and people can upskill to gain value rather than lose their jobs to AI. It's a complex problem because we need to balance trivial UX, with a slew of security and compliance requirements. This is the first non founder developer role on the z0.ai codebase. We need someone who can own the full stack end to end: product surfaces people enjoy using, services that stay correct, and the taste to make both feel like one product. We're funded and are live with our first customer already. We expect to onboard our next customer later this week and are actively ramping up sales efforts. Check out the full job posting at https://www.z0.ai/careers/founding-engineer/ and send an email to join@z0.ai
The primary gap is location/on-site requirement. If relocation is not an option, this specific role is a poor fit. If relocation were possible, then building a small project that integrates AI capabilities within an enterprise-like context (e.g., a simple internal tool with mock compliance features) could help bridge the 'security/compliance' gap. (2-4 weeks)
Standard Next.js deployment
Standard Postgres usage
New: Browser extension development & publishing - ~2 days
Learn it: Search getting-started ↗
Get set up: Create the account/instance, generate the API key or credentials, and add them to your project's environment variables.
Send an email to join@z0.ai as specified in the job posting.
“I'm a solo operator specializing in AI-enabled development, with experience building usage monitoring tools. I've created a prototype of an AI usage visibility browser extension and dashboard within a day – demonstrating my ability to move quickly and securely in this space. I'm keen to discuss how my full-stack expertise aligns with your founding engineer needs, particularly in balancing UX with security and compliance, and would love to share a demo of what I've built.”
Open the original ↗