{"id":178150,"url":"https://alion.io/job/thinking-machines-lab-software-engineer-ai-products","title":"Software Engineer, Product","company":{"id":14382,"name":"Thinking Machines Lab","domain":"thinkingmachines.ai","url":"https://alion.io/company/thinking-machines-lab","size_band":"501-1000","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Ashby","truth_index":null},"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","New York, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":300000,"max":350000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":350000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":5,"visa_sponsorship":true,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-08-31T03:45:39Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-08-31","last_verified_at":"2026-10-18T04:08:26Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":48,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":48},"description":"About Thinking Machines\nThe mission of Thinking Machines is to build AI that extends human will and judgment. We are training frontier models with Inkling, developing Tinker to let people make models their own, and crafting interfaces that broaden human-AI communication. We believe the future worth building is human, and we're hiring people who want to build it.\nAbout the Role\nWe're hiring a Full Stack Engineer to help conceive, build, and ship new AI-powered products from the ground up. You'll work on early-stage product ideas that sit at the edge of what our models can do - moving from prototype to something real people rely on, often within weeks rather than quarters.\nThis role sits at the intersection of product, design, and research. You'll partner closely with researchers to translate emerging model capabilities into interfaces and experiences, and with product and design to figure out what's worth building next. You'll frequently be the first engineer on a given idea, which means real ownership over both the technical direction and the product itself.\nWe're looking for someone who is energized by ambiguity, comfortable working across the entire stack, and motivated by getting new things in front of real users quickly.\nWhat You'll Do\nDesign, build, and ship full stack features across our web applications - from backend services and APIs to production-quality frontend interfaces.\n\nPrototype rapidly with new and emerging model capabilities, turning early research results into usable product experiences.\n\nTake new product ideas from a rough concept to a live surface that real users can try, iterating quickly based on feedback.\n\nPartner with researchers to understand model behavior, constraints, and capabilities, and translate them into product decisions.\n\nWork with design and product partners to define what to build, not just how to build it.\n\nOwn the technical architecture of the products you build, including decisions about scalability, reliability, and maintainability as they mature.\n\nHelp set engineering practices and technical standards for a growing product engineering team.\n\nSkills & Qualifications\nMinimum Qualifications\n5+ years of professional software engineering experience, with demonstrated ownership across both frontend and backend systems.\n\nStrong track record shipping production web applications end to end, from data model and API design through polished user-facing interfaces.\n\nComfort working in ambiguous, fast-changing environments where product direction is still being discovered.\n\nExperience making pragmatic technical tradeoffs to move quickly without accumulating unmanageable risk.\n\nPreferred Qualifications\nExperience building products on top of large language models or other frontier AI systems, including working around their quirks and limitations.\n\nA strong product sense - you enjoy figuring out what's worth building as much as how to build it.\n\nExperience as an early or founding engineer at a startup, or leading a product from 0 to 1.\n\nFamiliarity with modern frontend frameworks and a good eye for interface design and usability.\n\nExperience with distributed systems, infrastructure, or backend performance work at scale.\n\nA history of working closely and effectively with researchers, designers, or other non-engineering partners.\n\nLogistics\nLocation: This role is based in San Francisco, California.\n\nCompensation: Depending on background, skills and experience, the expected annual salary range for this position is $300,000 - $350,000 USD.\n\nVisa sponsorship: We sponsor visas. While we can't guarantee success for every candidate or role, if you're the right fit, we're committed to working through the visa process together.\n\nBenefits: Thinking Machines offers generous health, dental, and vision benefits, unlimited PTO, paid parental leave, and relocation support as needed.","description_format":"text","description_chars":3864,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":5,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Parental leave","Unlimited PTO"],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":true,"industries":["Multimodal AI","Foundation Models","AI Research Labs","AI Development Tools"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-08-31T04:54:15Z"}],"visa":[{"country":"US","licensed_sponsor":true,"evidence":"H-1B filings in 12 months: 30","filings_12m":30,"filings_prev_12m":8,"green_card_filings_12m":0,"median_offered_wage_usd":192500,"route":null,"cap_exempt":false,"checked_at":"2026-10-15T11:24:14+00:00","sources":["US Department of Labor: LCA disclosure data (H-1B, H-1B1, E-3)"],"filings_for_role_12m":7}],"liveness":{"score":36,"band":"fade","label":"Fading","p_open":1,"p_active":0.793,"p_room":0.45,"age_days":47,"expected_fill_days":29,"reasons":["conf:0","velocity","win:tail"],"computed_at":"2026-10-17T05:46:00Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":350000,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/thinking-machines-lab-software-engineer-ai-products","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/thinking-machines-lab-software-engineer-ai-products.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-18T05:59:36Z","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":8995,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-19T00:00:00Z"}},"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":14382},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=14382"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fthinking-machines-lab-software-engineer-ai-products"},{"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%2Fthinking-machines-lab-software-engineer-ai-products"},{"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%2Fthinking-machines-lab-software-engineer-ai-products"},{"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/thinking-machines-lab-software-engineer-ai-products\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fthinking-machines-lab-software-engineer-ai-products"}]}