Open Source Software Engineer, python-build-standalone

At Astral, our mission is to make the Python ecosystem more productive by building next-generation developer tools — tools that enable developers to ship great software, faster.

To start, we've built Ruff, an extremely fast Python linter and formatter; and uv, a comprehensive Python package manager — two of the fastest-growing developer tools ever.

Next, we're continuing to push the future of Python with a state-of-the-art type checker — and building out our first hosted services.

Our early team includes the authors of ripgrep, bat, hyperfine, and maturin; early, core contributors to Biome and Prefect; and multiple CPython core developers — all building at the intersection of Rust and Python.

This role centers on developing and maintaining python-build-standalone, a foundational project in the Python ecosystem that facilitates the creation of portable, standalone Python distributions.

python-build-standalone powers Python installation for uv, Rye, mise, Bazel's rules_python, pipx, Hatch, and more, with over 70,000,000 downloads since its release. For much of the ecosystem, it's now the primary source of Python installations.

Your work on python-build-standalone will be at the intersection of build engineering and systems programming: you’ll help produce a highly-portable, highly-compatible build of Python and improve the downstream experience for users in uv.

You’ll work on linker issues, build and release pipeline optimizations, and upstream changes to CPython, which will touch areas like relocatable installations, static and dynamic linking, symbol versioning, and binary optimizations (e.g., LLVM BOLT). We build for Linux, macOS, and Windows; experience with toolchains, packaging, or OS internals on any of these is a plus.

As with all positions at Astral, being an open source maintainer is a big part of the job too: engaging with the community, reviewing pull requests, debugging issues, and generally contributing to our culture of developing in the open.

• We're not only remote, but highly distributed. We hire from Pacific Time (e.g., San Francisco, USA) to Central European Time (e.g., Munich, Germany), and get together twice annually for week-long, in-person on-sites.

• We pay competitively (salary and equity) and offer comprehensive benefits (healthcare and more).

• Our work is highly collaborative, but as is common in open source, much of that collaboration takes place asynchronously (in Discord, or GitHub, or Notion). We minimize meetings, and maximize time spent working in code.

• We're a small, high-trust team. We strive to ship excellent software, at a fast pace... while having fun. (See: Our Values.)

Our hiring process is entirely remote and does not include any live coding segments. While the process may vary from candidate to candidate, it generally consists of four phases, each designed to mimic the kind of engagement and interactions you'd have as a member of the team:

1. A take-home project, where we ask you to build a command-line tool based on a pre-defined specification.

2. A presentation, where we ask you to present on some of your own work, and have the kind of technical conversation you'd have as a member of the team, grounded in something that you know well.

3. A conversation with our two core project maintainers about concrete problems related to the python-build-standalone project.

4. A conversation with our founder, Charlie, where we discuss our company culture, your own goals, and how they map to the role.

Along the way, we'll talk through your background and interests to determine whether Astral is a good fit for your career goals.