Staff Software Engineer, Product

About this role

About the RoleJoin the product engineering team at an early-stage public-sector HR technology company, building AI-powered tools for local government workforce management. As a hands-on technical lead, you will shape architecture and product direction across the full stack while helping a small team deliver trusted, useful software. What You'll DoOwn product features from data modeling and API design through frontend development and rollout.

Build AI-powered experiences, including chat interfaces, tool-calling workflows, and clear ways to present AI-generated insights.

Lead a product pod of two to four engineers, mentoring teammates while remaining primarily hands-on.

Create data-rich interfaces for searching, filtering, and making sense of imperfect workforce data.

Guide architectural decisions, review code, and establish practical engineering standards that support reliable delivery.

What We're Looking ForSeven to ten years of experience building and shipping software products, including work at startups through periods of significant growth.

Staff-level technical ownership across a product area, with experience mentoring engineers as a player-coach.

Frontend-heavy full-stack experience with React, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, Node.js, Postgres, and API design, including ownership of user experience and interface implementation.

Experience building production AI or LLM-powered features, such as agents, retrieval-augmented generation, tool-calling, or streaming.

Experience writing software before AI coding tools became commonplace, plus relevant academic or professional background in the product domain.

Clear, kind, proactive communication and comfort asking questions, collaborating, and constructively challenging technical decisions.

Familiarity with TanStack, Next.js, Drizzle, AI development frameworks, and background jobs or durable workflow systems is valuable. Open-source contributions or maintainership are also a plus.

Compensation & BenefitsThe annual salary range is $202,000 to $262,000. Visa sponsorship is available. LocationHybrid in San Francisco, California. The role may begin remotely before transitioning to an office-based arrangement.