Most software running inside government agencies wasn't designed for them. It started life as a tool for a bank or a retailer, then got bent into shape for a state office that needed anything better than its thirty-year-old mainframe. Concourse does the opposite. The New York startup builds AI-native software made specifically for how public sector agencies actually work, and more than 450 of them already run on it.
We've gotten to know the Concourse team through Fonzi, and they're hiring. If you want the code you write to actually reach people, this is a company worth knowing.
Who is Concourse?
Concourse is a New York startup based in the Flatiron District, founded in 2022 and backed by Bessemer Venture Partners. It builds for a part of the market most venture-backed startups skip, which is part of what makes it interesting. Government software is hard to get right. The compliance bar sits high and the systems being replaced are decades old, so plenty of teams would rather build something easier. Concourse decided the difficulty was the opportunity.
The CEO is Thomas Smyth, who's on his second company after a successful exit. You're not joining a founder figuring out how to run a company for the first time. He's done it before and knows what the next few years take.
What is ConcourseOS?
ConcourseOS is the company's platform, a modular system agencies can configure and launch in under 60 days. For anyone who's watched a public sector IT project drag on for years, that timeline is the whole pitch.
The job it does is replace legacy mainframe and paper-based systems with software secure enough for government use. That means SOC 2 Type II compliance and zero-trust access, with audit trails that cover every action. It's the kind of bar that scares off teams who'd rather not deal with it.
Who runs on it?
More than 450 public sector organizations use ConcourseOS today. The list includes state labor and legal agencies, transit authorities, utility districts, K-12 school districts, county election boards, and court systems. Each one is a slightly different version of the same problem, and the modular design is what lets Concourse serve all of them without rebuilding from zero every time.
The role they're hiring for
Concourse is hiring a Platform Engineer. Here's the shape of it:
Senior full-stack role
In person five days a week in Flatiron, New York
$160K to $230K
Backend in Python and/or Node, frontend in React
AI coding tools like Claude Code as part of the daily workflow
This is a builder's seat, not a role where you'll spend your days in planning meetings. You'd write across the stack and move between the products agencies use and the internal systems that keep Concourse running.
Why an engineer might want this one
A couple of things stand out.
It's a true ground-floor seat. You'd work directly with the founder and the early team, with real ownership over what gets built. The company is small and revenue is climbing fast, so the code you ship reaches people quickly, sometimes millions of citizens dealing with their own government. That kind of reach is rare this early in a company's life.
The range is wide, too. You'd build the products agencies interact with and the internal engine behind Concourse's AI pipelines. If you like moving between codebases and you're already comfortable standing up a full-stack app on your own, you'll settle in fast. And the AI tooling isn't a line on a pitch deck. The team builds AI-native products and uses AI coding tools as a normal part of the work.
One thing to know going in. This is a five-day in-person role in Flatiron, because Concourse wants its early team in the room together. If that fits how you like to work, the payoff is a tight team building something with real weight behind it.
Interested?
Concourse is the kind of company Fonzi exists to connect engineers with. Early, well-backed, building something genuinely hard, and moving fast.
If you're an engineer and you're not on Fonzi yet, now's a good time to sign up. We recently launched a text agent that gets you set up and answers questions as you go. Start at talent.fonzi.ai or text us.
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