Product Engineer

Product Engineer

Location - San Francisco, CA (Hybrid) - Hybrid role requiring three days per week in-office in Downtown San Francisco.

Compensation - $185,000 – $230,000 Base + Competitive Early-Stage Equity

Visa - Open to Visa Transfers (OPT, H1B Transfers) + TN, J1, and O-1 Sponsorship

Company Stage - Early Stage – Seed / Approaching Series A

Industry - Artificial Intelligence, Global Trade, Customs Technology, Fintech, Enterprise SaaS, Trade Automation, Agentic AI

Our client is building an AI-powered global trade platform designed to help importers navigate the increasingly complex world of tariffs, customs, and international trade.

The company is transforming fragmented trade data, documents, and operational systems into actionable intelligence that helps businesses uncover duty refunds, tariff exemptions, and other cost-saving opportunities.

The company has already reached significant early traction with more than 80 customers in production and strong recent revenue growth, while preparing for its next major funding milestone.

As a Product Engineer, you'll join a small, high-impact engineering team where every engineer has significant influence over product direction, technical architecture, and engineering culture.

This is an opportunity to work directly with founders and customers while building full-stack product experiences, data infrastructure, AI-powered workflows, and systems for a compliance-heavy domain where accuracy and reliability have real-world financial consequences.

What You'll Do

• Build full-stack product features across the platform from initial concept through production deployment
• Work directly with customer data to connect product capabilities with real-world use cases
• Process and transform messy, fragmented trade data from documents, CSVs, APIs, and other sources
• Build systems that convert unstructured and semi-structured trade data into clean, structured, actionable information
• Design and model PostgreSQL databases supporting complex global trade workflows
• Build reliable data models that can evolve as the company's customs-centric data graph expands
• Shape product direction alongside founders and technical leadership
• Work directly with users to understand operational problems and customer requirements
• Push back on product specifications when necessary and help determine the best technical and product approach
• Own features end-to-end from ambiguous requirements through architecture, implementation, deployment, and iteration
• Build customer-facing applications and workflows for importers and trade professionals
• Develop agentic AI workflows on top of the customs-centric data graph
• Build AI-powered systems that help customers identify duty recovery, tariff, and trade opportunities
• Design reliable AI workflows with appropriate safeguards for a compliance-heavy domain
• Build APIs, backend services, frontend experiences, and data workflows across the full product stack
• Integrate external APIs, customer systems, and third-party data sources
• Work with large volumes of documents and structured trade data
• Build systems that maintain accuracy, reliability, transparency, and traceability
• Collaborate closely with founders and the small engineering team on technical strategy
• Operate effectively in an ambiguous environment where requirements are not always fully defined
• Make pragmatic technical decisions balancing product velocity, correctness, and maintainability
• Identify product opportunities based on customer feedback and operational needs
• Improve system performance, reliability, scalability, and user experience
• Help establish engineering practices, technical standards, and product development workflows
• Continuously evolve the platform as the company expands into new trade advisory products

Ideal Candidate Background

Experience Requirements

• 2–5 years of professional experience in full-stack product engineering
• Strong product engineering background
• Strong full-stack software development experience
• Experience building and shipping customer-facing products
• Experience owning features end-to-end
• Experience working in startup or high-growth environments preferred
• Experience working within strong engineering cultures preferred
• Experience taking ambiguous product requirements through implementation and production
• Experience working directly with customers or end users preferred
• Experience working with complex data or operational workflows
• Strong ownership mentality with demonstrated execution ability
• Strong product mindset and customer orientation
• Comfortable making technical decisions independently
• Comfortable working closely with founders and senior technical leadership
• Ability to operate effectively in a small engineering team
• Strong interest in AI-powered products and modern software development
• Experience with fintech, trade, logistics, compliance, or other complex operational domains preferred

Technical Requirements

• Strong full-stack engineering experience
• Strong backend engineering fundamentals
• Strong TypeScript experience
• Strong Node.js experience
• Experience with NestJS or comparable backend frameworks
• Strong React experience
• Strong PostgreSQL experience
• Experience with Prisma, MikroORM, or comparable ORM technologies
• Experience building production APIs and backend services
• Experience with GraphQL or comparable API technologies
• Experience building modern customer-facing web applications
• Experience working with Redis or comparable caching/data systems
• Experience with background processing or job queues such as BullMQ preferred
• Experience integrating external APIs and third-party systems
• Experience working with structured and unstructured data
• Experience building data-heavy product workflows
• Experience with AI agents, LLMs, or AI-powered applications preferred
• Experience building agentic workflows preferred
• Strong software architecture and system design skills
• Strong understanding of production reliability and scalability
• Strong debugging and production troubleshooting capabilities
• Ability to reason across frontend, backend, data, AI, infrastructure, and product systems
• Ability to design systems where correctness and reliability are critical
• Ability to learn unfamiliar technical and business domains quickly

Education

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or related technical field preferred
• Equivalent practical engineering experience accepted
• Strong computer science and software engineering fundamentals

Soft Skills

• Exceptional technical ownership
• Strong product judgment
• Strong analytical and problem-solving ability
• Strong customer orientation
• Strong communication skills
• Comfortable working directly with founders
• Comfortable working directly with customers and users
• Strong ability to understand complex business workflows
• Comfortable challenging product requirements when appropriate
• High execution velocity
• Strong bias toward shipping
• Strong ability to reason from first principles
• Comfortable making technical decisions independently
• Strong architectural judgment
• Pragmatic approach to technical tradeoffs
• Strong attention to correctness and reliability
• Low-ego collaborative mentality
• Strong builder mentality
• Comfortable working across multiple technical areas
• Comfortable operating in ambiguity
• Comfortable managing multiple priorities simultaneously
• Strong ownership of production outcomes
• Strong product and business orientation
• Strong interest in AI-native product development
• Comfortable working three days per week in San Francisco
• Strong willingness to operate in a fast-moving early-stage environment

Compensation & Benefits

• Base Salary: