Founding Product Engineer

Founding Product Engineer (Frontend & UX Lean)

The UX playbook for trustworthy, action‑taking AI systems is still being written.

This role helps write it

We’re currently working with an early‑stage, product‑led technology company building a new operating layer for modern work.

Their mission is to reduce cognitive load, eliminate coordination overhead, and help people move from intention to action without sacrificing wellbeing or focus.

This is not another productivity, task, or planning tool.

They are building AI‑native systems that can take action, not just make suggestions, while remaining transparent, trustworthy, and fully user‑controlled. The product lives at the intersection of AI, UX, and human judgement, and requires careful design to feel empowering rather than opaque or overwhelming.

They are NYC‑based, well‑funded, and building with urgency.

We are hiring a Founding Product Engineer with a strong frontend and UX lean to help shape and build the product from scratch.

This is a true founding‑level individual contributor role
. You will work side‑by‑side with a small, highly technical founding team, stay extremely close to early users, and help define what the product should be through rapid experimentation.

You will not be handed a polished roadmap, detailed specs, or a mature design system. Instead, you’ll help discover the right product by shipping, testing, learning, and iterating fast.

This role is ideal for a senior, product‑led engineer who thrives in low‑process, pre‑PMF environments and enjoys zero‑to‑one work.

• Turn product hypotheses into working prototypes within days, not weeks
• Design AI‑native user experiences that feel collaborative, trustworthy, and controllable (not prompt‑heavy or opaque)
• Build simple, opinionated flows to test assumptions directly with users
• Own meaningful parts of the product end‑to‑end: UX, frontend, and implementation
• Work across the stack as needed, with a strong frontend and product focus
• Collaborate on system shape without premature abstraction or over‑architecture
• Ship quickly, learn from real usage, and iterate or discard work freely as assumptions change
• Stay close to early customers and incorporate feedback continuously

• 5–10+ years of hands‑on experience building real products
• Strong frontend skills with excellent UX and product intuition
• Full‑stack capable, but opinionated about user‑facing quality
• Product‑first mindset: you care deeply about clarity, trust, and interaction design
• Comfortable working with partial or ambiguous requirements
• Curious about applied AI and LLM‑enabled workflows, especially user‑facing ones
• Low ego, high agency: you move fast, take ownership, and change direction when users prove you wrong
• Experience in early‑stage startups, very small teams, or zero‑to‑one builds is a major plus

• Want real ownership and visible impact from day one
• Enjoy ambiguity early and bringing structure over time
• Prefer shipping, testing, and learning over polishing and perfecting
• Have strong instincts for modern UX and product taste
• Want to work closely with founders in a tight, fast‑moving team
• Are NYC‑based, or are exceptional enough to justify remote‑first early on

• Expect a fully defined roadmap before you start
• Prefer clean architecture before product signal
  
  Optimise for scale, abstraction, or elegance too early
• Want a narrowly scoped frontend‑only or backend‑only role
• Prefer large teams, heavy process, or layered decision‑making
• Are uncomfortable shipping imperfect work to learn faster

• Base salary: $200K–$240K (depending on experience and scope)
• Equity: Meaningful founding‑level ownership
• Location: NYC strongly preferred (hybrid); exceptional remote candidates considered