Why Umbrel, and why now?

People want privacy, ownership and control over their data, and fewer subscriptions. The cloud benefits from economies of scale mostly in compute sharing, not as much in storage. Storage in the cloud is rent forever (plus egress), while local storage is a one-time cost with zero egress and near-instant performance. Legacy NAS companies assume you enjoy DDNS, ports, volumes, and acronyms. Most people don't. There's a big gap for a consumer-grade, app-focused, OS-level experience. AI models keep getting smaller, smarter, and specialized. Running inference near your data is private, responsive, and cheap. A personal server is the natural home for that future.

Have you raised money?

Yes, we raised $3.4M and are fortunate to be backed by some of the top Silicon Valley investors, including Naval Ravikant, Joseph Jacks (OSS Capital), Sahil Lavingia (shl.vc), Sam Lessin (Slow Ventures), Anne Dwane (Village Global), Andreas Antonopoulos, Owen Gunden, and more.

What are the benefits of working at Umbrel?

A decent chunk of equity w/ cash compensation. Worldwide health insurance. New work equipment + an Umbrel Home/Pro, of course. Work from anywhere in the world. Complete autonomy at work. Learning and development stipend. Flexible work hours. Minimum 3-weeks of paid time off.

What are you looking for in candidates?

Talent, passion, genuine love for your craft, and the desire to do meaningful work. What we're not looking for: credentials and degrees. When you really love what you do, work feels like play. And when work feels like play, you become the best at it. That's what we're looking for.

Careers

Build the future of Umbrel.

Our most important work lies ahead of us, and you can be a part of it.

View open roles

The cloud made life convenient. It also took our data away. The personal computer gave us computing on every desk. The personal server will give us freedom in every home. We're here to power that shift. And to make it delightful.

How we work

We are a small, focused team. Every person here has an outsized impact on our product and our culture. When you join us, you're not just taking a role. You're directly shaping Umbrel's future.

01

Fully remote.

Async written communication daily, and a single weekly all-hands meeting. We optimize for long chunks of deep, focused work.

02

Everyone has a say in everything - design, code, copy, strategy.

We care about what's right, not who's right. High standards, direct feedback, and zero ego.

03

Zero managers or micro-management.

You own your scope end-to-end and are accountable for outcomes.

04

Once a year we get together for a week-long retreat.

We celebrate craft, share meals, and remind ourselves why we build.

How we design

NAS UX is stuck in the 2000s. Clunky setup, admin-first dashboards, scary networking gymnastics. We're designing the consumer-grade, app-first, OS-in-a-browser experience that feels familiar and effortless, not instructional.

01

Taste is a feature.

Clarity over cleverness, restraint over knobs. Micro-interactions and motion exist to communicate, not perform. If it doesn't reduce cognitive load, it goes.

02

Making a browser tab feel like an OS is hard.

The medium fights you. But that's the bar: every interface, every dialogue, and every experience should reinforce "this is my machine and my data lives here".

03

Do not overwhelm. But don't underwhelm.

Start with sane defaults that create an obvious path, then progressively reveal depth exactly where it's needed.

04

Umbrel Home and Pro are a part of the interface: unbox → first-boot → "aha" in minutes.

Hardware and software move as one. We leverage this opportunity to delight at that seam.

How we engineer

We spend most of our time on the problems before we write a single line of code.

Then we implement the simplest thing that can stay simple. Fewer moving parts, boring tools, clear boundaries. If future-us can't reason about it in five minutes months later, it isn't world-class yet.

01

User-first, not tech-first.

Start with the problem and reverse-engineer the simplest solution. Technology itself is a means, not the mission. No "cool stack" detours. Prototype, validate, then choose the right tool that wins for users.

02

Readable, maintainable code is the ultimate optimization.

Small modules, clear boundaries, typed interfaces, and tests that actually fail when they should.

03

The cost of a mistake is high.

Unlike a SaaS that can be hot-patched on a server, every bug ships to thousands of umbrelOS devices via the next OTA.

04

Users store their lives on Umbrel.

Assume hostile networks and design for least privilege and secure defaults.

Open roles

Find your seat at the table.

Table = our team Discord btw.

Engineering

umbrelOS is an operating system that lives in a browser tab: a desktop with a dock, windows, a file manager, and an app store of 350+ self-hosted apps. You'll lead its frontend, along with our first-party apps and umbrel.com.
The stack is modern and sharp: React 19 with the React Compiler, TypeScript, Vite, Tailwind, Radix, tRPC with TanStack Query, and Motion for animation.
What you'll work on
- The desktop itself: the dock, windows, widgets, and the hundreds of small interactions that make a browser tab feel like a real OS.
- The Files app: drag-and-drop, virtualized lists, thumbnails, fuzzy search, network shares. A file manager people actually enjoy using.
- The app store experience for 350+ apps, from discovery to installed in one click.
- Motion and micro-interactions that communicate state: consistent easing, meaningful transitions, nothing decorative for its own sake.
- In-browser terminal and code editing (xterm.js, CodeMirror), onboarding, settings, and the moments in between.
- umbrel.com. The website is a product surface too, and we treat it with the same care.
What we hope you bring
- You ship polished, accessible interfaces in React + TypeScript, and you sweat the last 5%: empty states, errors, skeletons, loading strategies, microcopy.
- You treat Figma as a contract you'll honor in code, and improve when reality demands it.
- You think in systems: API design, theming, responsive scales, and components that age well.
- You can take a vague problem, write a short design doc, prototype in code, and ship in small, reversible steps.
- You partner with design early: prototyping, tweaking spacing and easing, treating copy as part of the UI.
- You write crisply (we're async-first) and give kind, candid feedback.
- You have strong product judgment: you know when to refine and when to press "ship".
Apply
umbreld is the TypeScript daemon at the heart of umbrelOS. It runs on Node.js on thousands of devices, exposes a fully typed tRPC API over HTTP and WebSockets, and orchestrates everything from Docker containers to ZFS pools. You'll own major parts of it.
There's no ops team and no server fleet to hot-patch. Your code ships over-the-air to real hardware in people's homes. We think that's the fun part.
What you'll work on
- The app lifecycle: installing, updating, and running 350+ Dockerized apps reliably on machines we don't control.
- Storage: ZFS pools, RAID topologies, external drives, and migrations between them without losing a single byte.
- Backups, network file sharing, and sync that people trust with their photos, documents, and memories.
- Networking: mDNS discovery, Wi-Fi, static IPs with safe rollback, and the auth proxy that fronts every app.
- Auth and security: sessions, 2FA, and secure defaults that hold up on hostile networks.
- The OTA update path: A/B partitions and the machinery that lets us ship fearlessly.
What we hope you bring
- Deep comfort with TypeScript and Node.js, and enough Shell to be dangerous.
- A fundamental understanding of Linux, Docker, and networking.
- You think hard about every problem from the user's perspective, not the architecture diagram's.
- You enjoy being a generalist and aren't tied to one framework or corner of the codebase.
- You're naturally curious and happy to learn something you have no experience in. Most of our problems don't have Stack Overflow answers.
- You communicate clearly and often in writing (we do a lot of reading and writing).
- You have good judgment of when to ship: perfect is the enemy of good.
Apply
You'll build features end-to-end: a tRPC procedure in umbreld on one side, a polished React interface on the other, and nothing lost in between. One codebase, one language (TypeScript), fully typed from the ZFS pool to the pixel.
Everything we've shipped recently spans the whole stack. Backups went from snapshot logic to a restore flow you'd show your mom, and network file sharing went from Samba internals to a single toggle.
What you'll work on
- Whole features, owned end-to-end: design doc, backend subsystem, UI, and the polish pass.
- The umbreld backend: Docker app orchestration, storage, backups, networking, and auth in Node.js, tRPC, and Zod.
- The umbrelOS web UI: a desktop experience in a browser tab, built with React 19, Tailwind, Radix, and TanStack Query.
- The seams where most products leak: loading states, failure modes, migrations, and updates that ship OTA to thousands of devices.
What we hope you bring
- You're equally at home writing a daemon and obsessing over an empty state, and honest about which one you're better at.
- Deep comfort with TypeScript across the stack, and enough Shell to be dangerous.
- A fundamental understanding of Linux, Docker, and networking.
- You think hard about every problem from the user's perspective.
- You enjoy being a generalist and aren't tied to one framework or corner of the codebase.
- You communicate clearly and often in writing (we do a lot of reading and writing).
- You have good judgment of when to ship: perfect is the enemy of good.
Apply
We're working on an exciting new, unannounced project, and we're looking for someone to take full ownership of it. Architecture, build pipeline, releases: the entire codebase is yours, end-to-end.
The stack: React Native + Expo on mobile, Tauri on desktop, and native code when the platform demands it. Think Bluetooth, local network discovery, and making a phone talk to a server sitting in your living room.
We hope you are someone who
- Feels a deep sense of ownership over the apps you build. This one will carry your fingerprints everywhere.
- Has a strong background shipping iOS and Android apps with React Native, ideally with Expo.
- Is comfortable on desktop too, with frameworks like Tauri or Electron.
- Obsessively sweats the details: performance, animations, offline states, edge cases, and the stuff most people ignore.
- Has a hacker's spirit, unafraid to drop into native code or untangle a gnarly build system.
- Thrives with full autonomy, but loves supporting teammates and sharing what you learn.
- Sees every problem through the user's eyes.
- Communicates clearly and frequently (we do a lot of async writing and reading).
- Balances craft with pragmatism, and knows when to polish and when to just ship.
Apply
umbrelOS is a Debian-based OS, built in Docker and shipped with A/B over-the-air updates to x86 and ARM64 devices: Raspberry Pis, Umbrel Homes, and Umbrel Pros. You'll own the layer where the OS meets the metal.
This is the part of the stack where a mistake can't be hot-patched. Updates must never brick a device, storage must never lose a byte, and everything has to work on hardware we've never seen.
What you'll work on
- The OS build and OTA pipeline: reproducible Debian images, A/B partitioning, and update paths that always leave a device bootable.
- Kernel-level debugging and performance tuning across x86 and ARM64.
- ZFS storage, systemd and D-Bus integration, Wi-Fi, and the hardware quirks of the Umbrel Home and Umbrel Pro: thermals, LEDs, NVMe.
- VM-based integration tests that catch OS-level regressions (RAID, networking, backups) before users ever see them.
What we hope you bring
- A strong understanding of Linux at the kernel level, networking, and Docker.
- You can autonomously figure out problems that have no documentation, just source code and dmesg.
- You enjoy being a generalist and aren't tied to one corner of the codebase.
- You communicate clearly and often in writing (we do a lot of reading and writing).
- You have good judgment of when to ship: perfect is the enemy of good.
Apply
You'll own the electronics of the Umbrel Home and Umbrel Pro line, from component selection and schematic capture to PCB layout, prototyping, and mass production. Hardware and software move as one here: the board you design is part of the product experience, from thermals and acoustics to the LED on the front.
This role requires deep experience in the design, development, and testing of hardware systems, particularly motherboards/PCBs and circuitry.
What you'll work on
- The complete circuit design process: component selection, schematic capture, and PCB layout for our hardware products.
- Testing and validating electrical components and systems for quality, reliability, and performance, including thermal testing.
- Compliance with industry standards and regulatory requirements.
- Working with our software engineers so the electrical systems integrate seamlessly with umbrelOS: fan behavior, LEDs, power states.
- Leading the prototyping stages: troubleshoot, iterate, refine.
- Working closely with suppliers and manufacturers to take designs from prototype to mass production.
- Documenting the design process and supporting the product through its lifecycle.
Apply

Design

You'll design umbrelOS, an operating system that lives in a browser tab, along with our first-party apps, the Umbrel Home and Umbrel Pro experience, and umbrel.com. Making a browser tab feel like your own personal computer is one of the most interesting design problems we know.
You'll work directly with engineers who sweat interface details as much as you do. We pair early, prototype in code, and own the UX together end-to-end, from the first Figma frame to the last easing curve.
We hope you
- Like to spend your days staring at artboards in Figma.
- Are obsessed with creating delightful micro-interactions and animations.
- Are willing to throw away ideas if they're not great, and optimistic enough to keep hunting for new ones.
- Care about the details, maybe a bit too much (a pixel off ruins your sleep).
- Are excited to collaborate with everyone on the team (engineers, customer-facing folks, and more), because you believe inspiration can come from anywhere.
- Have good judgement of when to ship.
- Like to level up your design skills continually.
- Put yourself in the shoes of our users to craft a great experience.
- Enjoy being a generalist and are not tied down to a specific design, trend, or tool.
Apply

Marketing

We believe the best products spread through word-of-mouth of their users, and we're very lucky to have a passionate and loving community of thousands of users who voluntarily help each other out, write tutorials, create videos, and get creative in many surprising ways.
Our communication style is very friendly, transparent, casual, witty-but-respectful with our users, i.e. anti-corporate lingo.
Ideally we're looking for one person (or a 🦄) to do all of the following, but if you're only interested in one of them (like just shitposting memes on our Twitter) or a few of them (e.g. tutorial videos, paid ads, content), that's okay too.
In this role, you will
- Run external communications on all of our socials.
- Create marketing campaigns and paid ads.
- Stay on top of our SEO, and identify new content opportunities.
- Work with influencers/reviewers for umbrelOS and Umbrel Home and Umbrel Pro reviews.
- Manage community across our Discord, community forum, and Reddit.
- Shitpost (and sometimes not-shitpost) on our X (Twitter).
- Collaborate with our team to create engaging content, such as how-tos, tutorials, and guides.
- Write blog posts and press releases.
- Come up with new ideas! You'll run the show. ✨
Apply

If the role you want isn't listed here, email jobs@umbrel.com and tell us what you'd own and why it matters.

How to apply

Applying is just an email.

Write to us at jobs@umbrel.com and tell us three things:

01

Why Umbrel

What draws you to this mission, and what would you want to own here?

02

Why you

We love seeing portfolios, side projects, and the things you're most proud of building.

03

Why now

Why is this the right moment, both for you and for us?

Attach anything else that helps us see your work, like your CV, work experience, links, or just whatever tells your story best.

Email jobs@umbrel.com

Frequently asked questions

People want privacy, ownership and control over their data, and fewer subscriptions.
The cloud benefits from economies of scale mostly in compute sharing, not as much in storage. Storage in the cloud is rent forever (plus egress), while local storage is a one-time cost with zero egress and near-instant performance.
Legacy NAS companies assume you enjoy DDNS, ports, volumes, and acronyms. Most people don't. There's a big gap for a consumer-grade, app-focused, OS-level experience.
AI models keep getting smaller, smarter, and specialized. Running inference near your data is private, responsive, and cheap. A personal server is the natural home for that future.

We'll start with a quick video call to make sure we're on the same page. After that, we'd love to chat with you in-depth regarding the specifics around the job position over another one or two video calls, followed by a quick and fun challenge or a task.

Next, our preferred situation is that we get to work together for 2 to 4 weeks on a project (of course, we'd pay you whatever you think is fair). Often working together for a bit is a great way to determine whether there's a good match as future teammates and it can give you a lot of transparency. We're flexible with how much time you can allocate to the project and when you want to work on it. However, we understand that it's not always possible for everyone, so we're open to figuring something else out in such case.

All of us enjoy complete freedom to create our own work schedules and work from anywhere in the world. Most of our team communication is async. You won't find endless Zoom calls or full calendars here. Just a calm, creative group of humans enjoying challenging problems at the intersection of art and technology.

As a result of being a startup, we wouldn't want to hide this reality from you: raw hours make a big difference on the impact we can make right now. This won't always be the case, but it is at present. So we often find ourselves working later on in the evenings and sometimes on weekends, but it's mostly driven by personal ambition. We don't have any expectations from anyone to do so.