{"id":21898,"url":"https://alion.io/job/pear-vc-senior-product-engineer","title":"Senior Product Engineer","company":{"id":6218,"name":"Pear VC","domain":"pear.vc","url":"https://alion.io/company/pear-vc","size_band":"51-200","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":true,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Ashby","truth_index":{"grade":"A","score":85,"open_postings":100,"ghost_share":0.16,"stale_share":0,"repost_share":0.01,"time_to_fill_p50_days":173,"computed_at":"2026-10-25T05:49:26Z"}},"role":"Backend","role_family":"Backend","seniority":"senior","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["San Francisco, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":130000,"max":220000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":220000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":9,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":true,"technologies":[{"name":"AI Agents","optional":false},{"name":"AWS","optional":false},{"name":"GCP","optional":false},{"name":"LLM","optional":false},{"name":"LLM Guardrails","optional":false},{"name":"Voice Agents","optional":false},{"name":"Datadog","optional":true},{"name":"Docker","optional":true},{"name":"GitHub Actions","optional":true},{"name":"Go","optional":true},{"name":"JavaScript","optional":true},{"name":"Kubernetes","optional":true},{"name":"Next.js","optional":true},{"name":"PostgreSQL","optional":true},{"name":"Prompt Engineering","optional":true},{"name":"React.js","optional":true},{"name":"Terraform","optional":true},{"name":"Text-to-Speech","optional":true},{"name":"TypeScript","optional":true},{"name":"WebRTC","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-01-07T01:09:36Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-01-07","last_verified_at":"2026-10-25T11:43:52Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":291,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":1,"flags":["company_stale"],"days_open":291},"description":"Senior Product Engineer @ Kato\nAbout the Job\nPosition: Senior Product Engineer (Full-Time)\nReporting to: CTO\nLocation: San Francisco (4 days/week in person)\nCompany Overview\nLenders spend over $24B every year hiring agents to perform manual, repetitive servicing work. Existing AI solutions try to automate this, but they treat regulatory guardrails as an afterthought - meaning they can’t guarantee compliance and can’t be trusted with critical servicing workflows.\nKato takes a different approach.\nRegulations aren’t an afterthought - they’re the foundation. We start with a regulatory rules system and layer an AI decision engine on top of it. With this architecture, we’re building an AI-powered servicing platform that automates critical workflows across every channel with full compliance and best-in-class recoveries. Human teams are then free to focus only on the judgment-driven work that truly needs them.\nWe are starting today with a compliance first Voice AI agent that handles outbound and inbound loan servicing calls, and are already in production with major names in the fintech lending space like Bilt Rewards and Parafin.\nKato is founded by a team with deep operating expertise in financial services and software engineering:\nPratik Risbud (CEO/Co-Founder): Former Investment Banker at Goldman Sachs and led Credit/Operations at Brex\n\nDavid Zhu (CTO/Co-Founder): Former Software Engineer at Google and Engineering Manager at Brex\n\nKato is backed by institutional capital from Pear VC and angel investors from top tech companies such as Brex, Bridge, and Square. We are looking for top talent to join our team and power our growth.\nThe Role\nWe're seeking a driven, high-impact Senior Product Engineer to work directly with customers to build impactful new products and improvements. As our second engineering hire, you'll have an unparalleled opportunity to shape our technical foundation and future.\nYou'll own mission-critical projects driving company success, initially focusing on onboarding new customers and augmenting our voice agent framework as new customer needs arise. The role spans our entire technical stack - from real-time voice processing to customer-facing dashboards, infrastructure scaling, and product expansion. There will be significant opportunities to define product direction, build out engineering best practices and technical standards, and rapidly grow your scope and career.\nReporting directly to the CTO, this full-time role includes significant equity ownership.\nKey Responsibilities\nLead architecture and implementation of our real-time voice processing system\n\nDesign and build scalable, fault-tolerant distributed systems\n\nOptimize LLM integration for natural, compliance-aware conversations\n\nDevelop internal tools for voice agent monitoring and improvement\n\nBuild customer-facing dashboards and reporting systems\n\nPartner with customers to translate requirements into technical solutions\n\nEstablish engineering best practices and technical standards\n\nDrive technical decisions that shape product direction\n\nRequirements\nMust Have:\nBachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field\n\n2-5 years of production software engineering experience\n\nStrong background in API design\n\nExperience with cloud infrastructure (AWS/GCP)\n\nExcellent problem-solving and architectural thinking\n\nStrong communication and organizational skills\n\n\"Owner's mindset\" with bias for action\n\nLives and breathes product and code quality\n\nEndless curiosity and learning drive\n\nNice to Have:\nExperience with real-time audio processing or WebRTC\n\nBackground in Golang, TypeScript, or React\n\nExperience with LLM integration and prompt engineering\n\nDevOps and infrastructure automation experience\n\nFintech or financial systems background\n\nTech Stack\nBackend: Golang, PostgreSQL,\n\nFrontend: Next.js, TypeScript, React, TailwindCSS\n\nInfrastructure: AWS, Terraform, Kubernetes, Docker\n\nAI/ML: Large Language Models, Speech To Text, Text To Speech\n\nDevOps: GitHub Actions, Datadog\n\nWhy Join Us\nWork with experienced founders who've built and scaled financial products for 9+ years\n\nWork with a CTO with experience in all stages of engineering maturity from 0 to 1, mid-stage startups, all the way to large enterprise companies\n\nBuild something meaningful - this won’t be a 9-to-5. It will be intense, rewarding, and career-defining. You will own core customer relationships and parts of the technical stack from day one.\n\nShape the technical foundation of a product revolutionizing a $24BN market\n\nGet unmatched career acceleration: you’ll be working directly with customers getting direct feedback and direction from customer needs.\n\nDirect impact on product strategy and company direction\n\nWork with cutting-edge technologies in AI, voice processing, and cloud infrastructure\n\nDefine engineering culture and practices from the ground up","description_format":"text","description_chars":4857,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":9,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"bachelor","optional":false},"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Equity"],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Venture Capital"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-01-07T01:09:36Z"},{"event":"reopen","at":"2026-10-14T00:16:54Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":26,"band":"fade","label":"Fading","p_open":1,"p_active":0.71,"p_room":0.36,"age_days":291,"expected_fill_days":173,"reasons":["conf:1","win:tail","crowd:brand"],"computed_at":"2026-10-25T05:49:26Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":220000,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/pear-vc-senior-product-engineer","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/pear-vc-senior-product-engineer.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-25T13:12:25Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":18680,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-26T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":6218},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=6218"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fpear-vc-senior-product-engineer"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fpear-vc-senior-product-engineer"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fpear-vc-senior-product-engineer"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/pear-vc-senior-product-engineer\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fpear-vc-senior-product-engineer"}]}