Senior Software Engineer (Product Engineering)

Prolific is not just another player in the AI space – we are the architects of the human data infrastructure that's reshaping the landscape of AI development. In a world where foundational AI technologies are increasingly commoditized, it's the quality and diversity of human-generated data that truly differentiates products and models.

Senior Software Engineer

We're looking for Senior Software Engineers with a product builder mind-set to join our specialized team focused on serving frontier model creators and AI application developers. As a full‑stack engineer, you will work across Prolific’s domains to solve customer and product problems and work directly with cutting‑edge AI companies to make critical technical decisions that balance scrappy startup execution with scalable engineering. You must be based within regular commuting distance of the San Francisco office and able to collaborate with US and UK‑based teams.

What You’ll Bring To The Role

• 6+ years of relevant technical expertise in a product engineering role.
  • Python (Django & FastAPI)
  • TypeScript and JavaScript (Vue.js)
  • SQL and NoSQL databases (MongoDB, Postgres)
  • Cloud deployment (GCP, Github Actions & CircleCI)
  • Instrumentation, monitoring & observability (Datadog)
• Good understanding of modern web applications and architecture design patterns
• Can translate business concepts into software models
• Experience working in monoliths and distributed systems
• Understanding of code quality and automated testing
• Strong communication and collaboration skills for direct customer interaction
• Ability to quickly learn and adapt across the breadth of Prolific’s domains
• Judgment to balance startup execution with scalable engineering
• Comfort with rapid iteration and responding to customer queries with urgency
• Experience supporting applications in production environments
• Experience working in a collaborative product engineering team
• Interest in the product lifecycle and delivering value to customers
• Comfortable learning from feedback and iterating based on data
• Curious and motivated to continuously improve technical skills

What You’ll Be Doing In The Role

• Highly self‑motivated and energetic, thriving in a fast‑paced environment with a bias for action, balancing generic scalable solutions with rapid implementation
• Work as part of a cross‑functional team alongside engineers, product managers, account managers, and customer success specialists
• Collaborate directly with customers and stakeholders to understand their unique needs and translate those into actionable next steps
• Develop domain expertise in AI development workflows and frontier model training
• Respond quickly to customer queries and technical challenges, owning problems and their solutions
• Write clean, maintainable code within shared repositories while keeping customer‑specific focus
• Contribute to the design, implementation, and maintenance of product features using agile practices
• Support production systems and respond to incidents when required
• Learn how our systems operate from development through to production
• Participate actively in team discussions, retrospectives, and knowledge sharing
• Collaborate effectively with UK‑based teams across time zones
• Pushing boundaries, questioning status quo, ensuring high impact for users

Key Technologies

• Cloud Platforms: Google Cloud Platform and AWS
• Programming Languages: Python, JavaScript, TypeScript
• Frameworks: Vue.js, Django Rest Framework, container‑based and serverless architectures
• Databases: MongoDB, DynamoDB
• DevOps and Monitoring: CircleCI, Github Actions, Kubernetes, Celery, EventBridge, Datadog

Why Prolific is a Great Place to Work

We’ve built a unique platform that connects researchers and companies with a global pool of participants, enabling the collection of high‑quality, ethically sourced human behavioral data that fuels more accurate, nuanced and aligned AI systems. Our mission reflects the breadth and best of humanity, and we offer competitive compensation. For this full‑time role in San Francisco, the base salary range is $200 000–$250 000 per annum.

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