Why join this early

Early means your fingerprints are on everything.

Right now, EXCAR is a Raspberry Pi wired into a 2015 Mazda, a codebase three people know by heart, and a roadmap that's still being shaped by what we learn from real drives. Joining now means decisions you make — about architecture, about how EXCAR sounds, about what it should never do — become part of the foundation.

It also means real constraints: limited runway, hardware that sometimes needs a hard reset, and a team small enough that "someone else will handle it" usually isn't true. If that sounds more exciting than exhausting, you might be a good fit.

What working with us is like

  • Direct access to the founders — no layers, no process for the sake of process
  • Decisions get made fast, and get revisited honestly when they're wrong
  • You'll touch hardware, not just code — this product lives in a car
  • We push back on each other, and expect the same in return
Where we could use help

Areas we're actively thinking about.

These aren't formal job postings with fixed scopes — they're honest descriptions of where an extra set of hands or a different perspective would help most right now.

Embedded & Hardware Engineer

High priority

EXCAR runs on real hardware connected to a real car's OBD-II port. We need someone comfortable with low-level systems work — power management, hardware interfaces, and making sure a device under a dashboard survives a New England winter.

Chip-level / systems background a strong plus

On-Device ML Engineer

High priority

Working alongside our AI lead on quantizing and optimizing a multilingual language model to run fully offline, with latency low enough that EXCAR still feels alive without a network connection.

Experience with model quantization (GGUF, ONNX, or similar)

Mobile Engineer (React Native)

Open

The companion iOS app handles onboarding, voice enrollment, memory management, and device status. There's a clear backlog of features to take it from beta to release-ready.

React Native / Expo experience

Vehicle Integration Engineer

Open

Expanding EXCAR's plugin system beyond Mazda — researching OBD-II quirks, dashboard integration points, and steering-wheel controls across other car manufacturers.

Automotive software or OBD-II protocol experience

Industrial Designer

Open

EXCAR needs to look like it belongs under a dashboard — compact, unobtrusive, and durable. We're looking for someone who can take it from "Raspberry Pi in a project box" to a real product.

Physical product design portfolio

Something else?

Tell us

If you read through everything above and thought "none of those quite fit, but here's what I'd bring instead" — that's a good reason to reach out. Small teams benefit from people who don't fit neatly into a box.

Make your case below

Tell us what you'd bring.

No resume parsing, no application tracker. Send a few lines about what you're interested in and why EXCAR caught your attention — one of us will read it and reply personally.