Failed Founders

Your Dream. Our Team.

About Rise8

Rise8 builds custom, secure software for government organizations, measuring success by impact: lives saved, time returned, and missions advanced. 

We think big, start small, and scale fast with elite teams across product, design, and engineering to drive continuous delivery for critical missions.

We believe customer experience starts with employee experience, so we take care of our employees. Rise8 is where you’ll do the best work of your career—supported by a culture you won’t find anywhere else. We offer competitive pay and benefits, but what sets us apart is our commitment to autonomy, growth, and a culture rooted in kindness, candor, and continuous learning. 

Certified as a Great Place to Work®, with 100% of employees saying they love working here, Rise8 is where bold ideas become real capabilities. Where mission meets meaning. And where fewer bad things happen because of bad software.

Why This Role Exists

The last few years have been hard on startups. Many strong founders built real products, led teams, navigated uncertainty—and still had to shut things down.

We believe that experience isn’t a liability. It’s an asset.

At Rise8, former founders consistently excel because they bring:

• Bias toward action
  
  
• Comfort with ambiguity
  
  
• Systems thinking
  
  
• Deep ownership of outcomes
  
  
• Emotional resilience earned the hard way
  
  

Rather than forcing you into a predefined box, we want to understand where you do your best work now.

The Role (You Define It)

This is an open-role posting for former founders who want to apply their skills in a mission-driven environment.

You might be best suited for work as a:

• Program or Product Manager
  
  
• Software Engineer
  
  
• Designer or UX Practitioner
  
  
• Delivery Lead
  
  
• Technical or Strategic Operator
  
  
• Or a hybrid role shaped by your experience
  
  

We’re open to helping shape the role based on your strengths, interests, and the impact you want to make.

What You’ll Do

Depending on your background, you may:

• Build, ship, and improve real software used in high-impact environments
  
  
• Lead delivery teams focused on outcomes—not outputs
  
  
• Translate user needs into actionable solutions
  
  
• Navigate uncertainty and help teams find clarity
  
  
• Contribute across disciplines when the problem demands it
  
  

What matters most is your ability to move work forward and deliver value.

What We’re Looking For

• You’ve founded or co-founded a startup that didn’t work out
  
  
• You’ve lived through hard decisions, uncertainty, and failure
  
  
• You’ve built something real—product, team, system, or operation
  
  
• You’re comfortable owning problems without perfect information
  
  
• You’re curious, adaptable, and not precious about titles
  
  
• You want meaningful work with real-world impact
  
  

We’re not looking for flawless resumes or linear career paths.

Pitch Your Role

Instead of a traditional job description, we’re asking for something different:

In your application, tell us:

• What you built as a founder
  
  
• What you learned when it didn’t work
  
  
• What kind of role you believe you’d excel in now
  
  
• How you want to contribute at Rise8
  
  

Clarity beats polish.

Benefits

• Flexible schedule in a 100% distributed workforce 
• Premium Insurance: We cover up to 100% of the employee premium and up to 80% of the combined dependent premium on our base health plan, depending on pay band. We also cover 100% of the premium for employee and dependent Dental and Vision as well as employee premiums for Life and Disability coverage.
• Retirement: 401k match at 10% gross pay.
• Paid time off (PTO): 4 weeks combined accrued vacation and sick leave, 11 Federal holidays, your birthday, jury duty, and bereavement.
• Education & Training: Accrued budget of up to $3,500 per year for classes, travel, events, and materials.
• Home Office and Merch: We offer $750 per year for home office technology and equipment as well as $100 per year for Rise8 merch from our Swag Store.
• Wellness Budget: To encourage and support a well-rounded healthy lifestyle, we cover 100% reimbursement on a variety of wellness activities and products, up to $500 per calendar year. OR Rise8 is part of the the Life Time Corporate Partner program. In lieu of your $500 annual wellness benefit, you can instead get a $75 monthly credit towards a Life Time membership ($900 annual benefit).
• Equipment: We offer a MacBook Pro

Apply

If this resonates, we want to hear from you.

All of Rise8’s work in this area is with Federal Government customers that require our employees involved with their projects be U.S. citizens. As such, this role requires U.S. citizenship. If hired, you would also be required to go through a background investigation.

Rise8 is an Equal Employment Opportunity employer that will consider you for this role regardless of race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, marital status, gender identity or expression, national origin, genetics, age, disability status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.