The 19 Best Async-First Companies to Work For in 2026
You've probably filtered a hundred job listings by "remote." But here's what remote doesn't tell you: will you be expected to answer Slack messages within minutes? Are there five recurring standups a week? Does "flexible" just mean you work 9–5 from your kitchen instead of an office?
For a growing number of professionals, the real filter isn't where you work, it's how you work. And the companies on this list are the gold standard of the latter.
These are organizations that have built genuine async-first cultures: where written communication is the default, meetings are rare and deliberate, and your contribution is measured by what you produce, not when you're online.
This isn't a list of companies that say they're "remote-friendly." It's a list of companies whose entire operating model is built around async work. There's a meaningful difference, and it matters for your career.
What makes a company truly async-first?
Before diving in, here's the filter we applied. A genuinely async-first company:
- Defaults to written, non-real-time communication (Notion, GitHub, email, Loom) over live chat or video calls
- Has fewer than five scheduled recurring meetings per week for the average employee
- Evaluates employees on outcomes, not availability or hours logged
- Maintains documentation so thorough that new hires can onboard without calling anyone
- Has no strict time zone requirements, or minimal overlap windows (typically two to four hours)
Companies that simply "allow" remote work didn't make the cut. We're looking for organizations where async is the culture, not a perk.
The 19 best async-first companies to work for in 2026
1. GitLab
- What they do
- DevOps platform for software development, security, and operations
- Headcount
- 2,100+ employees across 60+ countries
- Async credentials
- GitLab is the most documented company in history. Their public employee handbook exceeds 2,700 pages and covers everything from how to run a meeting to expense policies. Their operating principle: if it isn't written down in the handbook, it doesn't exist. Meetings are optional and always recorded. CEO Sid Sijbrandij has said the real challenge of distributed work is not remote, it's asynchronous. GitLab has been the blueprint for async-first culture since 2015.
- What to expect
- Strong documentation culture, handbook-first decision-making, full time zone freedom, no mandatory standups
- Open roles
- Engineering, product, design, sales, marketing, and more
2. Doist
- What they do
- Makers of Todoist (task manager) and Twist (async team communication)
- Headcount
- ~100 employees across 35+ countries
- Async credentials
- Doist has been async-first since 2010, before the word existed in the mainstream. Their product Twist was built specifically because they found Slack too interrupt-driven. About 80–90% of all internal communication is asynchronous. They've maintained over 90% employee retention for five consecutive years. CEO Amir Salihefendić wrote the definitive essay on why async communication is superior, and their entire company is the proof.
- What to expect
- 40 days of PTO, annual company retreat, location-based competitive salaries, zero meeting culture
- Open roles
- Engineering, product, design, marketing, customer support
3. Automattic
- What they do
- The company behind WordPress.com, WooCommerce, Tumblr, and Jetpack, software that powers over 43% of the internet
- Headcount
- 1,900+ employees in 90+ countries
- Async credentials
- Matt Mullenweg, Automattic's founder, literally wrote the framework on distributed work (“Five Levels of Autonomy”). Level 4 — where Automattic operates — means evaluating people on outcomes, not hours. Their hiring process is famously text-based: many employees have never video-chatted before their first day. Internal communication happens primarily through P2 (their internal blogging platform), not Slack. They hold an annual Grand Meetup for in-person bonding, but the default is fully async.
- What to expect
- Full schedule autonomy, outcome-based evaluation, generous benefits including home office budget, minimum 25 days PTO
- Open roles
- Engineering, design, product, marketing, support, legal
4. Basecamp (37signals)
- What they do
- Project management software (Basecamp) and email (Hey)
- Headcount
- ~70 employees
- Async credentials
- Basecamp is the philosophical home of async work culture. Co-founders Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson wrote Remote and It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work — two books that have collectively shaped how thousands of companies think about work. Their operating principle: “working should mostly happen in long stretches of uninterrupted time.” Meetings are treated as a last resort, not a default. They've been profitable for 25 consecutive years without VC funding.
- What to expect
- No-meeting culture, six-week project cycles (Shape Up methodology), calm work environment, exceptional work-life balance
- Open roles
- Small team, infrequent openings, but worth watching
5. Zapier
- What they do
- Workflow automation platform connecting 7,000+ apps
- Headcount
- 800+ employees
- Async credentials
- Zapier built a custom internal tool called “Async” — a cross between a blog and Reddit — to replace email and Slack for important decisions. Their hiring process, onboarding, and daily operations run on written documentation. Teams span 40+ countries with no mandatory overlap windows. They've been remote-first since founding and made async-first before it was a trend.
- What to expect
- Work-from-anywhere, home office stipend, wellness budget, unlimited PTO, strong documentation culture
- Open roles
- Engineering, product, design, marketing, operations, sales
6. PostHog
- What they do
- Open-source product analytics platform
- Headcount
- ~60 employees, fully distributed
- Async credentials
- PostHog publishes its entire company handbook publicly, compensation philosophy, hiring process, how decisions get made, even how they think about meetings (spoiler: they're skeptical of them). They ship in small teams (2–4 people) with maximum autonomy. Their engineering culture is built around written proposals and async code reviews, not sync meetings.
- What to expect
- Extremely high autonomy, generous equity, transparent pay, quarterly team offsites, no managers in the traditional sense
- Open roles
- Engineering, design, marketing, sales
7. Buffer
- What they do
- Social media management platform
- Headcount
- ~100 employees
- Async credentials
- Buffer has been remote-first since 2012 and publishes its entire culture, salaries, and equity in public. They have a default-to-async communication policy and have published extensive writing on what makes async work. Their “no meeting Wednesdays” evolved into a broader cultural principle of protecting deep work time across the week.
- What to expect
- Transparent salaries, four-day work weeks (piloted and continued), annual retreat, strong written communication culture
- Open roles
- Engineering, marketing, customer success, product
8. Supabase
- What they do
- Open-source Firebase alternative (backend-as-a-service)
- Headcount
- ~100 employees, fully distributed
- Async credentials
- Supabase is a fully remote, async-first company with employees across dozens of time zones. Their engineering process is built around GitHub, PRs, issues, and written discussion replace most real-time communication. They ship fast, document extensively, and have no headquarters. Their team page literally lists employees' time zones, not locations.
- What to expect
- Fast-moving, high-ownership engineering culture, strong open-source community involvement, competitive compensation
- Open roles
- Engineering, developer relations, product, design
9. Close
- What they do
- CRM platform for sales teams
- Headcount
- ~100 employees
- Async credentials
- Close has been fully remote since 2013, before remote-first was mainstream. Their communication defaults to written over verbal, long-form over short-form. CEO Steli Efti has publicly discussed how async-first work has let them build a high-performance culture without the meeting overhead that plagues similarly-sized companies. They focus on manager autonomy and output-based evaluation.
- What to expect
- Four-week paid sabbatical after two years, 401(k) with 6% match, flexible hours, goal-based bonuses
- Open roles
- Engineering, sales, marketing, customer success
10. Toggl
- What they do
- Time tracking and project management tools (Toggl Track, Toggl Plan, Toggl Hire)
- Headcount
- ~130 employees across 40+ countries
- Async credentials
- Toggl has been fully remote and async-first since 2010. They have a no-meeting culture as a firm default, meetings are explicitly discouraged in favor of written communication through Basecamp and email. Their async-first approach is so embedded that they built their own hiring product (Toggl Hire) to make their own async hiring process work better.
- What to expect
- No-meeting culture, flexible hours, location-independent hiring, strong work-life balance ethos
- Open roles
- Engineering, product, design, marketing, operations
11. Help Scout
- What they do
- Customer service platform for growing businesses
- Headcount
- ~170 employees
- Async credentials
- Help Scout has been remote-first since 2011 and has invested deeply in async communication tools and culture. Their internal blog (called Watercooler) replaced many sync meetings. They write extensively about building a thoughtful remote culture, and their handbook covers communication norms in detail.
- What to expect
- No-meeting philosophy, strong written culture, equity for all employees, annual retreat, home office budget
- Open roles
- Engineering, support, marketing, product
12. Sentry
- What they do
- Application monitoring and error tracking
- Headcount
- ~650 employees
- Async credentials
- Sentry operates distributed engineering teams across time zones with a strong async collaboration model. Their open-source roots mean extensive public documentation and writing over verbal communication. They've built a culture where written decisions are the norm, not the exception.
- What to expect
- Competitive compensation, strong engineering culture, open-source ethos, generous PTO
- Open roles
- Engineering, product, design, sales, marketing
13. DuckDuckGo
- What they do
- Privacy-focused internet search engine and browser
- Headcount
- ~200 employees
- Async credentials
- DuckDuckGo has been fully remote since founding and operates with async-first communication. Written updates, documented processes, and minimal real-time meetings are core to their culture. Their privacy-first mission extends to how they think about employee autonomy and time.
- What to expect
- Mission-driven culture, flexible scheduling, strong written communication norms, competitive compensation
- Open roles
- Engineering, design, product, marketing
14. Atlassian
- What they do
- Enterprise collaboration software (Jira, Confluence, Trello)
- Headcount
- 11,000+ employees
- Async credentials
- Atlassian's “Team Anywhere” model is one of the most ambitious async-first experiments at enterprise scale. They've explicitly banned “productivity theater” — the performative online presence many remote workers feel pressure to maintain. Their own research (the State of Teams reports) has helped shape the broader industry understanding of async work benefits. At 11,000 people, their success proves async scales beyond startups.
- What to expect
- Large-company stability with async-first culture, strong benefits, broad career progression, annual Team Anywhere summit
- Open roles
- Engineering, product, design, sales, marketing, and enterprise functions
15. GitHub
- What they do
- The world's leading software development platform
- Headcount
- 3,000+ employees
- Async credentials
- GitHub is async by nature, the entire product is built around non-real-time collaboration through pull requests, issues, and code reviews. Their internal culture mirrors this: teams communicate through written proposals and documentation rather than meetings. They've been remote-first for years and offer full time zone flexibility for most roles.
- What to expect
- Generous equity, strong benefits, professional development budget, wellness allowances, unlimited PTO
- Open roles
- Engineering, product, design, marketing, enterprise sales
16. Gumroad
- What they do
- Platform for creators to sell digital products
- Headcount
- Small, contractor-heavy team
- Async credentials
- Gumroad is the most extreme example on this list. Founder Sahil Lavingia describes it as “async-only” — zero meetings, 24-hour response time expectations, and a fully flexible schedule. Communication happens entirely through GitHub and Slack threads, with no real-time coordination required. For people who want maximum freedom and don't mind the trade-off of minimal structure, Gumroad represents the far end of the async spectrum.
- What to expect
- Zero meetings, maximum autonomy, part-time and contractor arrangements common
- Open roles
- Engineering, operations
17. Stripe
- What they do
- Global payments infrastructure
- Headcount
- 7,000+ employees
- Async credentials
- Stripe is famous internally for its “writing culture” — a deeply held belief that writing forces clearer thinking than talking. Employees write memos for proposals, decisions, and updates. Meetings at Stripe are expected to have pre-read documents. While not as radically async as Gumroad or Doist, Stripe's writing culture means their teams do significantly less synchronous communication than comparably-sized companies.
- What to expect
- Top-tier compensation, strong equity, exceptional engineering culture, intellectual depth across the org
- Open roles
- Engineering, finance, design, risk, product, marketing
18. Linear
- What they do
- Project management and issue tracking tool for software teams
- Headcount
- ~60 employees
- Async credentials
- Linear is built for teams that work fast and write well. Their own internal culture mirrors their product philosophy: structured, written, and low-ceremony. They have a small, highly autonomous team with minimal management layers and async-first communication as the default.
- What to expect
- High-ownership culture, excellent equity for a growth-stage startup, fast-moving product environment
- Open roles
- Engineering, design, product
19. Notion
- What they do
- All-in-one workspace for notes, docs, and project management
- Headcount
- ~800 employees
- Async credentials
- Notion's product is literally async communication infrastructure, and their internal culture reflects this. Teams run on Notion wikis and pages rather than live meetings. Written proposals precede decisions. Async is embedded in how they think about knowledge management, both for customers and internally.
- What to expect
- Generous compensation and equity, strong design culture, fast-paced product environment, remote-first hiring
- Open roles
- Engineering, product, design, marketing, sales
How to evaluate async culture in any job interview
Even if a company claims to be async-first, these interview questions will reveal the truth:
- "How many recurring meetings does the average person on this team attend per week?" - If the answer is more than five hours, it's sync in practice.
- "What's the expected response time for a Slack or Teams message?" - "Within minutes" means synchronous, full stop.
- "How are decisions documented and communicated?" - If the answer is "we just talk about it," there's no async culture.
- "Do you have a public or internal handbook?" - Companies with real async culture document obsessively.
- "Are there any required time zone overlaps for this role?" - An honest answer tells you how truly flexible the schedule is.
- "How does someone new onboard without calling people?" - Async-first companies have written onboarding. Sync companies say "you'll shadow someone."
Find your next async job
Every company on this list, and dozens of others like them, posts their open roles on asyncjobs.co. It's the only job board built specifically to aggregate roles from async-first companies, so you're not hunting through thousands of "remote-friendly" listings wondering which ones will actually give you your time back.
Whether you're a developer, designer, marketer, or operator, if you do your best work with uninterrupted focus and no 9 AM standups, your job search starts here.
Browse async-first jobs →This list is updated regularly. If you work at or know of an async-first company that should be included, reach out through asyncjobs.co.