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100yrs:71days:7hrs:20min:36secsince the 5-day work week began –It's time for a 4 day weekRead the Full Story →

Updated July 11, 2026

20 open positions

First Principles Thinking Jobs with a Great Work-Life Balance

Browse 20+ first principles thinking jobs at companies offering unlimited PTO and best places to work—full pay and a better work-life balance. 1 new this week. Hiring companies include Basis, Opendoor, and Anthropic.

20

Jobs

1

New This Week

10+

Companies

Updated Daily

Staff Software Engineer, Cribl AI

1mo

RemoteUSA

62 · Good5 day weekUnlimited PTO$230k - $275k

Head of Investment Products

3mo

RemoteUSA

62 · Good5 day weekUnlimited PTO$290k - $362k

Analyst

1mo

RemoteIndia

59 · Good5 day weekVery Flexible

Principal Product Manager

1mo

RemoteUSA

57 · Good5 day weekBest Place to Work

AI Enablement & Execution Leader

1mo

HybridAmsterdam or London

85 · Excellent4 day week100% pay

Product Manager, Research

2d

HybridSan Francisco or New York City

55 · Good5 day weekGenerous Parental Leave$305k - $385k

Senior Software Engineer

15d

OnsitePune, India

62 · Good5 day weekUnlimited PTO

Strategy

26d

OnsiteSeattle, USA

61 · Good5 day weekUnlimited PTO

Software Engineer

18d

HybridMiami, USA

59 · Good5 day weekUnlimited PTO

Software Engineer

18d

HybridSeattle, USA

59 · Good5 day weekUnlimited PTO

Software Engineer

18d

HybridToronto, Canada

59 · Good5 day weekUnlimited PTO

Senior ML/AI Modeler, Risk Automation Machine Learning

1mo

HybridSeattle, USA

59 · Good5 day weekUnlimited PTO

GTM Strategy & Operations Associate

2mo

HybridNew York, USA

59 · Good5 day weekUnlimited PTO

Product Manager (EMEA)

1mo

HybridLondon, UK

58 · Good5 day weekBest Place to Work

Principal Product Designer

1mo

OnsiteMountain View, USA

57 · Good5 day weekBest Place to Work

Business Development Representative

26d

OnsiteNew York, USA

56 · Good5 day weekUnlimited PTO

Product Designer - New Vertical

2mo

OnsiteNew York, USA

56 · Good5 day weekUnlimited PTO

Narratives & Communications Lead

2mo

OnsiteNew York, USA

56 · Good5 day weekUnlimited PTO

Research Product Manager, Model Behaviors

18d

HybridSan Francisco or New York City

55 · Good5 day weekGenerous Parental Leave$385k - $460k

Deployed Intelligence - Strategist

2mo

OnsiteNew York, USA

56 · Good5 day weekUnlimited PTO

Every role is a genuine reduced-hours position, manually curated and refreshed daily. How we curate

Got questions?

Frequently asked questions

Everything you need to know about 4-day week jobs

Employers hiring for First Principles Thinking on this page include Basis, Opendoor, and Anthropic. First Principles Thinking 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 Thinking is a primary requirement or one of several preferred skills — expand any role above to see the full stack and responsibilities.

First Principles Thinking roles span the full seniority range — we list 20 open roles requiring First Principles Thinking 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 Thinking 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 Thinking 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 Thinking 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 Thinking on current listings.