Founding Product Engineer

A Founding Product Engineer will own the product experience of an early-stage AI startup from initial concept through production delivery.

They will combine product design, frontend engineering, and technical product judgment to create polished interfaces for software built around AI agents.

This is one of the first three engineering roles. The position is full-time and on-site in San Francisco six days per week. Relocation support is available, including an O-1 visa route for exceptional international candidates and a possible initial start in Vienna.

Responsibilities

• Own product work from problem definition and user flows through interface design, implementation, release, and iteration.
• Design and ship production interfaces using TypeScript and React.
• Translate rough concepts, sketches, and workflows into clear, high-quality product experiences.
• Establish interaction patterns for AI-agent products, including agent state, activity, outcomes, errors, approval steps, and human overrides.
• Work directly with the founder to decide what to build, how it should work, and what quality bar the product must meet.
• Build reusable frontend components and product foundations that support rapid iteration without creating avoidable technical debt.
• Connect frontend experiences to backend services, APIs, and AI-agent workflows.
• Validate product decisions through prototypes, shipped features, user feedback, and observed usage.
• Balance speed, visual quality, usability, technical quality, and scope when making product trade-offs.
• Own production outcomes, including debugging, performance, reliability, and follow-up improvements.
• Establish practical standards for frontend architecture, accessibility, responsiveness, testing, and maintainability.
• Use AI coding tools appropriately while reviewing generated code and maintaining responsibility for the resulting product.

Required experience

• 2 to 8 years of hands-on product or software engineering experience.
• Production experience shipping applications with TypeScript and React.
• Experience owning work across both product design and implementation.
• Demonstrable visual and interaction design ability through shipped products, a portfolio, prototypes, or side projects.
• Experience building a product or feature from zero to one in a startup, founding-team, or similarly ambiguous environment.
• Ability to connect frontend applications to APIs, backend services, and asynchronous workflows.
• Ability to make clear product and technical decisions without complete requirements.
• Willingness to work on-site in San Francisco six days per week.
• Willingness to relocate to San Francisco if not already based there.

Technical environment

• TypeScript.
• React.
• Frontend product architecture.
• UI component systems.
• AI-agent interfaces.
• API-connected web applications.
• Prototyping and interface design.
• AI coding tools.
• Production software development.

Success measures

• Product concepts become usable, tested, and production-ready features quickly.
• Interfaces are visually coherent, understandable, responsive, and reliable.
• AI-agent interactions clearly communicate state, progress, outcomes, failures, and required user action.
• Frontend architecture supports rapid product iteration without unnecessary duplication or fragility.
• Product decisions are validated through working software and user feedback rather than remaining at the concept stage.
• Shipped features meet defined user outcomes while maintaining appropriate standards for accessibility, performance, testing, and maintainability.
• The engineer takes full responsibility for product outcomes from initial idea through production operation.