Two years of APX

As AI got great at coding, many predicted the end of the entry-level job. At Sierra, we thought the opposite. When AI handles more of the code, the things that matter most are creativity, judgment, and ambition — and new grads have these traits in spades. They are also AI natives: the first generation to grow up with ChatGPT and Claude as everyday tools which gives them a huge advantage in an applied AI company like Sierra.

We believe that these new grads will define the next generation of great companies, so we launched the APX program two years ago. Our first two APX classes have done incredible work:

• Manat Kaur was Sierra’s first-ever intern. She came back as an APX, helped build Voice Personas, and demoed it to thousands of customers at Sierra Summit (see picture below).
• Six months in, Areeb Khan moved to Singapore as part of a five-person Sierra landing team. Together they opened our first office in Asia and launched agents for flagship customers like Singtel.
• Rajiv Swamy launched mortgage agents for Rocket that now serve millions of customers. Then he took Horizon, one of Sierra’s biggest releases this year, from idea to live product.

If you’re scrappy, entrepreneurial, and want a high degree of agency, Sierra is the place for you. You’ll be working with the largest companies in the world — almost 50% of the Fortune 50 — to make applied AI a reality from day one.

Why we built APX

Our co-founders, Bret Taylor and Clay Bavor, met in 2005 as Associate Product Managers at Google. The APM program gave them real responsibility early, the chance to build for millions of users, and a group of peers who became lifelong friends. Eighteen years later, they started Sierra together.

In designing APX, we asked ourselves: now that AI is changing what it means to build software, what would Bret and Clay do if they were graduating today?

As AI writes more of the code, we think the best builders will be the ones who can do it all: talk to customers, decide what to build, and build it. That’s why APX isn’t a PM or an engineering program. You can be an engineer in one rotation and a PM in the next, or work directly with customers then build the platform underneath them. We’re betting the next generation of founders won’t fit neatly into a single role description, so we built a program where you don’t have to choose.

How APX works

APX is a one-year rotational program across product management and engineering. You do two six-month rotations, each in one of four roles: Agent Product Manager, Agent Engineer, Platform Product Manager, or Platform Engineer. Agent roles work directly with customers to design, build, and launch their AI agents. Platform roles build Agent OS and Agent Studio, the platform every Sierra agent runs on. Wherever you land, you’ll inherit an unreasonable amount of responsibility and autonomy.

Beyond the rotations

APXs don’t just learn how to succeed in a company. They learn what it takes to build one. Alongside rotations, the program hosts a regular speaker series (most recently with board member Peter Fenton), a book club, and fireside chats with Sierra’s leaders. Each class also takes on a capstone: you build a demo with our sales engineers, sharpen the pitch together as a class, then pitch real prospects alongside Bret and Clay.

Each year, the class travels together to Sierra’s offices around the world. This year, it’s Tokyo, Singapore, and London where APXs are meeting customers, seeing how Sierra works across markets and languages, and getting to know the teams building our international business.

We hope you’ll apply

We’re looking for exceptional builders, future entrepreneurs, and a well-rounded class that strengthens our whole company. If you see a bit of yourself in Manat, Areeb, and Rajiv’s stories, we hope you’ll apply.