Software Engineer, Apps & Agents at Ollama in Palo Alto, CA

Ollama is the most popular way for developers to access open models. What started as an open-source, local-first runtime is now the largest developer network in the open-model ecosystem, with 8.9 million monthly active developers and more than 67,000 community-built integrations. We're backed by Y Combinator, Benchmark, 8VC, and Theory Ventures.

Our team is small and talent-dense. We're flat, low-ego, and fast-moving. We like people who think from first principles, have strong product instincts, and care deeply about making software feel simple and delightful.

About the role

You'll shape how people use Ollama across the desktop app, CLI, and tools they already use. A major part of the role is making open models work well with existing agent harnesses, coding tools, IDEs, and desktop applications.

This is a product engineering role with broad ownership. You'll design interfaces, build native and backend systems, create integrations, and test complete user journeys across local and cloud models.

What you'll do

• Build and refine Ollama's desktop app, CLI, onboarding, and more.
• Make agents and developer tools easy to connect to Ollama.
• Build first-class integrations while developing reusable systems that let others create and maintain their own.
• Ensure local and cloud models work reliably across different tools and agent harnesses.
• Test integrations through real workflows and turn recurring failures into durable compatibility improvements.
• Work across native applications, Go services and APIs, and web product surfaces.
• Partner with model and inference engineers to ship new models with appropriate capabilities, defaults, and integration support.

You may be a fit if

• You've built a thoughtful developer product that real people use.
• You combine strong engineering fundamentals with product judgment and visual attention.
• You're comfortable owning ambiguous work from exploration through implementation and polish.
• You enjoy debugging behavior across processes, configuration files, APIs, native applications, and third-party tools.
• You can simplify complex systems without hiding important behavior from users.
• You care about state preservation, recovery, compatibility, and the details that make integrations trustworthy.
• You're comfortable working across several parts of the stack. Experience with Go, TypeScript, React, or similar technologies is useful.
• You test your work hands-on and recognize when technically correct behavior still produces a poor experience.
• You make good decisions in gray areas by weighing user needs, technical constraints, data, and product taste.
• You use agents to help you prototype, iterate, and ship to production fast.
• Partner with model and inference engineers to ship new models with appropriate capabilities, defaults, and integration support.

Nice to have

• You've built an agent, contributed to an agent harness, or modified one enough to understand how models, tools, context, permissions, and configuration interact.
• You have experience building developer tools, native desktop applications, IDE extensions, or integrations with third-party software.
• You've worked with local inference, hosted models, or products that must behave consistently across both.
• You've built something with Ollama!