Founding AI Product Engineer

About the role

We’re looking for a strong full-stack engineer who can own the complete product development process: understand a business problem, define the solution, design the user experience, build the software, and improve it after launch.

You’ll work closely with leadership and business teams, combining hands-on engineering with product management and design responsibilities. You should be highly effective with AI coding tools and have the technical depth to independently review, debug, secure, and maintain everything you ship.

What you’ll own

• Translate business needs and user feedback into product requirements, user flows, prototypes, and prioritized development plans.
• Design and build polished applications across the front end, back end, database, and integrations.
• Make architecture decisions and scope releases that balance speed, reliability, and future maintainability.
• Use AI tools throughout development to accelerate implementation, testing, debugging, and documentation.
• Own deployment, production monitoring, incident resolution, and ongoing improvements.
• Measure whether your work improves adoption, conversion, operational efficiency, or another relevant business outcome.

Required technical skills

1. Front-end engineering

• Strong proficiency in TypeScript, JavaScript, React, and Next.js, including component architecture, hooks, routing, and client/server rendering.
• Strong HTML and CSS skills, with the ability to implement responsive layouts and consistent visual design.
• Experience managing forms, validation, application state, asynchronous data, caching, and loading/error states.
• Ability to diagnose rendering issues and improve page performance, bundle size, and unnecessary network requests.
• Ability to build accessible interfaces with semantic markup, keyboard navigation, and appropriate focus management.

1. Back-end development and API design

• Strong proficiency in Node.js and TypeScript, using a framework such as Express, NestJS, or an equivalent.
• Experience designing and implementing REST APIs, including validation, pagination, consistent error handling, and API documentation.
• Experience implementing authentication, authorization, role-based access, and third-party integrations.
• Ability to build reliable background jobs and webhook processing, including retries, duplicate-event handling, and failure recovery.
• Understanding of timeouts, rate limits, caching, and common application bottlenecks.

1. Databases and data modeling

• Strong practical knowledge of PostgreSQL and SQL.
• Ability to design relational schemas, relationships, constraints, and indexes.
• Experience with database migrations, transactions, and investigating slow queries.
• Familiarity with an ORM such as Prisma or Drizzle, along with the ability to inspect and optimize the underlying SQL.
• Ability to handle data integrity, concurrent updates, and safe changes to production data.

1. Deployment and production operations

• Experience independently deploying and operating applications on a cloud platform such as AWS, GCP, Azure, or Vercel.
• Working knowledge of Git, pull requests, CI/CD pipelines, environment configuration, and secrets management.
• Familiarity with Docker and reproducible development environments.
• Ability to set up useful logs, error tracking, monitoring, and alerts.
• Experience handling releases, database migrations, rollbacks, and production debugging.

1. Testing, security, and code quality

• Ability to write meaningful unit, integration, and end-to-end tests using tools such as Vitest/Jest and Playwright/Cypress.
• Strong debugging skills across browser behavior, API requests, application logs, and database queries.
• Practical understanding of secure sessions, server-side permission checks, input validation, SQL injection, XSS, and protection of sensitive data.
• Ability to structure maintainable code, review changes critically, and refactor without breaking existing behavior.

1. AI-assisted software development

• Regular, hands-on use of tools such as Cursor, Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, or Codex.
• Ability to give AI tools useful repository context, break complex work into verifiable tasks, and guide implementation across multiple files.
• Ability to evaluate generated code for correctness, security, maintainability, and compatibility with the existing application.
• Experience using tests, type checks, linting, and code review to validate AI-generated changes.
• Ability to explain and debug the resulting code independently and recognize when an AI-generated approach should be revised or discarded.

Product and design skills

• Product discovery: Speak with users, understand workflows, identify the underlying problem, and challenge assumptions constructively.
• Prioritization: Define a focused first release, make scope trade-offs, and connect engineering effort to business value.
• Interaction design: Create user flows and prototypes using Figma or code, including edge cases and failure states.
• Visual execution: Apply sound judgment around typography, spacing, hierarchy, consistency, and responsive behavior.
• Measurement: Instrument important user actions and combine analytics with feedback to guide improvements.
• Communication: Explain decisions clearly and coordinate with nontechnical stakeholders.

Experience we’re looking for

• Typically 5+ years of software engineering experience, or equivalent evidence of substantial independent ownership.
• A track record of shipping and maintaining full-stack production applications.
• Examples of features or products where you personally influenced the requirements, design, and implementation.
• Experience taking loosely defined problems through to a working release.

Nice to have

• Python and FastAPI.
• Experience building AI features using model APIs, structured outputs, tool calling, or retrieval, with attention to evaluation, latency, and cost.
• Experience integrating CRMs, payment systems, analytics platforms, or business workflow tools.
• Experience as an early startup engineer or independent product builder.

Why you'll love Inspira

• Amazing people with a great vision and values
• Mission-driven team culture focused on student success
• Your work directly impacts the lives and careers of students across the globe
• Health, dental, and vision insurance, base plans 100% employer paid
• Pre-tax benefits (FSA, DCFSA, HSA, Commuter)
• Flexible paid time off (PTO) and paid holidays
• 401(k) with company match