Staff Software Engineer, Product
Staff Software Engineer, Product
San Francisco, CA | $200,000–$300,000 base + equity | Full-time
TypeScript · React · Postgres
The problem you’ll solve
An authentication system can be technically sound and still leave a business owner unable to add an employee. A CMS can be powerful and still require a developer to make it useful.
Your job is to close that gap.
Our client is building an AI platform that lets businesses create their own operational software—CRMs, inventory systems, HR platforms, and the applications they use to run their companies. The people building with it often have deep knowledge of their businesses and no engineering background.
They need capabilities that work reliably and feel obvious. Making that happen takes serious engineering and thoughtful product decisions.
What they’re looking for
An engineer who can take a goal like “build users and access management” and carry it through to a complete product.
You’ll work with the founders to understand the problem, decide what the first useful version should include, design the experience, build the frontend and backend, and get it into customers’ hands. Then you’ll own what happens next.
The strongest fit is a full-stack engineer with particular strength in frontend development and product judgment. Someone who cares about the interaction a user sees and understands the APIs, permissions, and data model underneath it.
What you’ll own
You could take responsibility for a substantial area of the platform: authentication and access, CMS, files and media, email, commerce, or part of the app-building experience.
That means:
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Turning broad requirements into a focused product with clear boundaries.
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Building simple, considered interfaces in React and TypeScript.
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Owning the supporting APIs, backend logic, and Postgres data model.
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Making decisions about reliability, security, and maintainability.
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Shipping to real users, understanding where they get stuck, and improving the experience.
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Using AI coding tools throughout development while staying accountable for the code and its behavior.
A week might include simplifying a permissions workflow, designing a schema, building the interface, debugging a production issue, and changing your original approach after seeing how customers actually use it.
The environment
This is a small, founder-led, Series A company with substantial customer usage and a growing product surface. Engineering capacity is a real constraint. There is more useful work to do than the current team can deliver.
You’ll work directly with technical founders in a flat organization. Expect short feedback loops, consequential decisions, and room to own the solution.
The pace is demanding. Requirements will sometimes be incomplete. Priorities will evolve. You’ll need to decide what deserves deeper engineering and what can be made simpler so it ships sooner.
This is a deeply hands-on role. The Staff title comes with responsibility for delivering substantial products.
What would make your background compelling
You’ve owned a meaningful product or module from the initial problem through production launch and subsequent improvements. You can explain what you built, what you personally implemented, the tradeoffs you made, and what happened when people used it.
You likely bring:
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Strong React and TypeScript experience, with an eye for clear interactions and restrained UI.
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Backend experience that includes API design, relational data modeling, and production debugging.
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Several substantial examples of shipped work.
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Experience in a small startup or another environment where engineers own broad outcomes.
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A daily AI-assisted development workflow—and the technical understanding to recognize when generated code is wrong.
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Clear communication about technical decisions, priorities, and progress.
Former founders and founding engineers are especially relevant. So are product engineers who have earned increasing ownership within strong engineering teams.
Most candidates will have roughly 2–10 years of professional experience. Scope and demonstrated ability matter more than an exact year count or your current title. Public projects, open-source work, and technical writing are welcome; substantive work built inside a company counts just as much.
Why consider it
You’ll help make sophisticated software usable by people who could not previously build it themselves. The work reaches customers running actual businesses, where a better workflow has practical consequences.
You’ll also have the opportunity to shape whole product areas while the team is still small enough for your decisions to materially influence the platform.
Compensation includes $200,000–$300,000 base salary plus equity, with flexibility in the cash/equity mix. The company also offers health coverage, flexible PTO, extensive AI tooling access, and meals in the San Francisco office.
The team prioritizes working together in San Francisco. Exceptional North America-based remote candidates may be considered individually; this is primarily an onsite search.
The interview process
Expect a short initial conversation, a system-design interview, a one-hour live AI-assisted coding exercise, and a product-focused discussion.
The process looks at how you reason, build, debug, and simplify—and whether you can take a product from an open-ended goal to something that works.
A note from Epic Placements
If this sounds like the kind of ownership you want, we’d like to hear about something you built.
Send your résumé or profile and a short description of one product or module you personally took from idea to production: the problem, your contribution, and what happened after launch. A link or demo is welcome, but not required.
We’ll give you a candid view of the company, the expectations, and the opportunity so you can decide whether it’s worth exploring.