About Circle
What is Circle?
Circle is building "the world's leading all-in-one platform for online communities" — software that lets creators, coaches, educators and businesses bring an audience together with discussions, live streams, events, chat, courses and payments in one place, all under their own brand. It was founded by Sid Yadav, Rudy Santino and Andrew Guttormsen in early 2020; the founders were previously on the founding team of the course platform Teachable. Circle reports $30M raised to date from investors including the founders and CEOs of Zapier, HubSpot, GitHub, Superhuman, Gumroad and Product Hunt, and says the platform serves "more than 10 million members in communities run by some of the world's top creators and institutions."
Where will I work?
Anywhere. Circle describes itself as "a fully remote company of around 200 (and growing!) team members from 30+ countries around the world" and as "a remote-only team" — there is no head office to report to. What makes it unusual among globally distributed employers is pay. Circle's published compensation philosophy commits to "consistent, U.S.-benchmarked compensation, regardless of your location," benchmarked against Carta data, with the same benefits everywhere. CEO Sid Yadav writes that "it's no accident that we're one of the only remote companies in the world which chooses to pay U.S. benchmarked compensation to our international team members."
What is the Circle team like?
Around 200 people across engineering, design, product, marketing and support, organised around five stated values: long-term thinking, trust and autonomy, bias for action, product first, and grow together. Writing carries the culture — roles ask you to "influence decisions, and align teams asynchronously," and job ads specify C2-level English because so much of the work happens in documents. Hiring runs through Greenhouse over roughly four to six weeks: recruiter screen, hiring manager interview, team interviews, a skills assessment, then a final executive or culture conversation.
Work-Life Balance
Circle is unusually direct about how it manages people: "We don't track hours, but we do manage for high expectations very closely. We collaborate across time zones, are highly async, and like to document a lot." Time off is a defined allowance rather than a vague one. Full-time team members "receive 35 working days of PTO per year," covering vacations, local and international public holidays and sick days, with up to 18 unused days rolling into the following year. Long service earns more: every five years you accrue two extra weeks of paid leave, which can be combined with standard PTO for up to a month away. Circle does not publish a four-day, 32-hour or compressed week.
Perks and Benefits
- 35 days of paid time off a year, covering public holidays and sick days
- Cigna cover in the US; health insurance reimbursement elsewhere
- Dental and vision plans fully covered by Circle
- Stock options, with refresh grants after two years
- 12 weeks paid leave for birthing parents, six for bonding parents
- Two extra weeks of paid leave every five years
- $3,000 tech and home-office stipend ($2,150 for non-technical roles)
- $500 a year for books, courses and learning materials
- Whole-company offsites twice a year
- Highly async, document-first working; hours are not tracked