I frequently get questions about working at Hugging Face. It has a very unique culture and work style that differs frmo most companies. The experience may vary, but I’ll do my best to capture the essence here.

If you’re interested in working at HF, this blog post goes into more detail.

Fully Asynchronous & Remote

Hugging Face hires talent from all over the globe. While there are a few offices (primarily in Paris), most of us work remotely. Almost my entire team is based in Europe, while I’m in Florida.

At most companies, this would create communication challenges. However, at HF communication is entirely asynchronous. What does this mean?

There are no daily standups, no sprint meetings, no retrospectives, no 1:1s cluttering your calendar. Just Slack, async. Everything is communicated publicly within the company. This was a huge draw for me to join.

Employees are empowered to curate a work schedule that works best for them. There’s not a huge rush to answer a message or work certain 9-5 hours. It’s about the work being done, not what specific time you do it.

This doesn’t mean people work fewer hours—often it’s the opposite. We’re all deeply passionate and self-motivated about our work.

Flat

At Hugging Face, we have nearly zero dedicated designers, engineering managers, or project managers. Everyone codes. Everyone ships.

I report directly to both Victor (Head of Product) and Julien (Co-Founder & CTO). It’s a flat organization where work is visible and job titles hold little weight. Aside from a few team leads, we’re all just Engineers.

Julien, even as the co-founder, commits and reviews a good chunk of the teams PRs.

Without a multitude of roles, engineers wear many different hats.

You are expected to:

Come up with new ideas
Take the idea from 0 -> Production
Talk to users and get feedback
Market and communicate about your work
Iterate

There is absolutely no red tape. This culture enables engineers to make a very high impact.

It’s not for everyone. The autonomy and lack of structure requires a unique kind of person. You need to be deeply self-motivated, comfortable working for long stretches without check-ins or micromanagement. No one is going to tell you what to do next. If you thrive on clear direction and frequent feedback loops, it can feel isolating.

But if you’re the type who loves owning problems end-to-end and shipping fast, it’s hard to imagine a better place to build.