AI changed the math
Used well, AI lets a few good people do work that used to need a much bigger room. We were built for this moment — and we want people who already feel it.
Careers / 2026 intake
We hire great people.
We pay them well.
Resumes not required.
ConnectEra is a small studio that builds websites for founders. We use AI to move fast and stay sharp. Three roles open for 2026. No theatre.
Why join now, not later
Four shifts that make 2026 the only year that matters for studios like this one. If you feel them too, you’re probably one of us.
Taste is what’s left
Anyone can generate a hero section in 90 seconds. The work that still wins has judgement behind every pixel and every word. We hire for taste and train the rest.
Small studios are winning
Founders pick small, named studios over big agencies full of strangers. Our whole bet is on becoming the studio you’d trust with your launch. You’d help build it.
Results, not deliverables
No timesheets. No status meetings. No “how’s the deck coming?” You ship the page. The launch moves the needle. The client comes back. That’s the loop.
How a 2014 agency runs. How we run.
If the left column is your last job, you’ll feel the difference in week one.
The old way
Most agencies, still.
- Five rounds of stakeholder review on every page
- Account managers sitting between you and the client
- Decisions made by people who’ve never seen your work
- Twenty hours of weekly status meetings
- Burnout treated as a “season” you push through
- Promotions tied to politics, not work
ConnectEra
Our contract with you.
- One review with Billy. Ship or rewrite. That’s it.
- Direct line to founders on every project
- Decisions made by people who’ve read your work
- One short written check-in a day. Two real calls a week. Nothing else.
- Burnout means we made a planning mistake. We fix it.
- Every hire gets co-author credit on the work, in writing
Open roles
Three seats for the 2026 intake. Click any row for the full read — who it’s for, who it’s not for, what week one looks like.
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R—01
Design Engineer
You design the site and you ship it. We don’t split that between two people. Discovery, art direction, layout, motion, production code, deploy — one person, end-to-end. Astro, Next.js, Tailwind, Cloudflare on the build side; Figma, GSAP, Rive, Lottie on the craft side.
What we’re looking for
- Portfolio of sites you both designed and built end-to-end
- A real visual point of view — we can tell from your personal site
- Production experience with Astro or Next.js, Tailwind, and edge deploys
- Comfortable with motion (GSAP, Rive, or Lottie) and performance budgets (Lighthouse 95+)
- You already use AI to compress the boring 80% and judge what comes back
Probably not for you if
- Pure UI generalists looking for a ticket queue
- Backend-heavy engineers looking for distributed-systems problems
- Designers who hand off and disappear
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R—02
Sales Closer
No base. 100% commission. Uncapped. This is the seat for an operator who already runs a full pipeline through AI — prospecting, research, outreach, qualification, follow-up — and would rather take a real cut of real deals than a salary with a quota on top. We bring the studio, the work, and the warm pipe. You bring the closes.
What we’re looking for
- You’ve closed real B2B deals before — projects or retainers, not SaaS MRR theatre
- AI is already your pipeline: outreach, enrichment, personalization, follow-up
- You write your own outbound. You don’t wait on enablement decks
- Operator energy — happy without a manager, a team, or a CRM hand-holding you
- Honest with prospects. We don’t want pressure tactics on our brand
Probably not for you if
- SDRs hunting for OTE certainty or a base to fall back on
- Anyone who needs a manager, a team, or a script
- People who still talk about AI as “the future” instead of using it today
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R—03
Studio Operator / Project Lead
You run delivery on the retainer book. Client kickoffs, weekly check-ins, renewals, the calendar. You make sure design and sales don’t step on each other and that every client feels handled. This is not project-management theatre — it’s the role that lets the rest of us move faster.
What we’re looking for
- Comfortable running several ongoing retainer clients without dropping a ball
- Comfort with team tools (Notion, Linear, Slack) and automating the boring parts
- Can say no to scope creep without making the client feel small
- Bonus: you’ve sold or upsold studio retainers before
Probably not for you if
- Career PMs who want a large org to administer
- Anyone who needs daily standups to feel productive
Four steps. Two weeks. Done.
No 6-round panel. No “culture deep-dive” with someone who’s never seen your work. We get to a yes or a no within 10 days because your time is worth more than that.
01
Day 0
Apply
Short form below. A few questions and your best link. No cover letter — we won’t read it.
02
Within 5 days
Founder call
30 minutes with Billy. A real conversation about your work. No HR, no whiteboard, no “tell me about a time…”.
03
1 week
Paid trial
A real, paid piece of work — for a client or an internal project. We see how you ship. You see how we work.
04
Within 10 days
Offer
Yes or no, with a clear offer. No counter-offer theatre. Start date in 2–6 weeks.
A short letter 
I read every application myself.
If you got this far, you’re probably the kind of person we want to talk to. The form on the right is short on purpose. I’m looking for one thing: evidence that you can think and ship. A link to your best work tells me more than any bullet list ever will.
If your application gets a yes, you’ll hear from me within five days. If it’s a no, you’ll hear from me too — with the actual reason. That’s the trade.
Billy Reiner
Founder, ConnectEra