Employers hiring for First Principles on this page include Helion, Basis, and Anthropic. First Principles roles appear most frequently in engineering, data, and platform teams at companies that have adopted a reduced-hours schedule. Each listing indicates the seniority level and whether First Principles is a primary requirement or one of several preferred skills — expand any role above to see the full stack and responsibilities.

First Principles roles span the full seniority range — we list 24 open roles requiring First Principles across entry-level, mid-level, senior, lead, and staff/principal positions. Senior and above tend to dominate because employers offering reduced-hours schedules often lean toward experienced individual contributors who can deliver consistently in fewer hours. Filter by level in the sidebar to narrow the list above.

Lead with measurable outcomes over time spent — First Principles hiring managers at reduced-hours companies care about delivered value, not hours worked. Highlight projects where you shipped at a steady cadence, collaborated asynchronously, or reduced engineering toil through automation or tooling. Include concrete metrics (latency improvements, adoption numbers, cost reductions) rather than vague duty descriptions. Expand listings above to see the exact framing each employer uses in their job descriptions.

For the full-pay schedules here — 4-day weeks and 9-day fortnights — yes: you keep a full-time salary for a shorter week. Part-time and pro-rata roles instead scale pay to hours, and each listing makes the arrangement clear. First Principles roles in tech and data typically command premium rates at both reduced-hours and traditional employers; specific ranges depend on seniority, location, and sub-specialty (e.g. backend vs frontend, infra vs ML). Individual listings above show exact bands where the employer publishes them.

Depends on the role, but First Principles candidates who also demonstrate async communication, clean documentation, and cross-functional collaboration are typically strong fits for reduced-hours employers — those companies rely on written-first communication and high-context handoffs to operate on a compressed schedule. Technical-adjacent skills vary by stack. Browse the top skills shown in the sidebar to see which tags co-occur most often with First Principles on current listings.