Senior Product Builder (Engineering Focus)

a16z speedrun

$150K — $200K *
Enterprise Technology
5 - 7 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 6+ years of software engineering experience
  • Strong fundamentals in TypeScript and React
  • Full-stack development capability
  • Exceptional product taste
  • Detail-oriented and naturally curious
  • High ownership mentality
  • Experience in a startup or high engineering standards environment

Responsibilities

  • Define, design, and build features from start to finish
  • Create fast, polished, customer-facing UIs
  • Collaborate directly with founders on product direction
  • Integrate AI agents into daily workflows and product development
  • Identify and resolve issues proactively
  • Make architecture decisions beyond just implementation

Benefits

  • Unlimited PTO
  • Equity participation ranging from 0.5% to 1.5%
  • No degree requirement, valuing product sense and execution over formal education
Full Job Description
Job Description

Brief is the context navigator for product teams. We aggregate business context (decisions, customer research, work pipeline, team knowledge) and make it legible to both people and AI agents through chat, Slack, CLI, and voice.

We believe the boundaries between product, design, and engineering are dissolving. The scarce resource is no longer engineering hours; it's taste, judgment, and the conviction to ship. So we hire Product Builders who wear all three hats and own whole things.

This is the engineering-focused shape of that role. Our bet: the disciplines blend, but the best builders still have a center of gravity. Yours is engineering, a long tenure writing real software, paired with genuine taste and discernment for UX, UI, and user empathy.

If you've spent the last year thinking hard about how AI changes the product-building loop, using Claude/Cursor/Copilot not as autocomplete but as a genuine collaborator, you might be exactly right for this.

About The Role
  • Define, design, and build features yourself, start to finish. No spec, no handoff.
  • - Build customer-facing UI that's fast, opinionated, and polished.
  • - Work directly with the founders on product direction. No PM layer, no design queue.
  • - Use AI agents in your daily workflow, and build products that AI agents use themselves.
  • - Find what's broken, confusing, or missing and fix it before being asked.
  • - Drive architecture decisions, not just implementation.

About You (Must Have)
  • A long tenure as a software engineer. Roughly 6+ years.
  • - Strong TypeScript and React fundamentals, comfortable across the full stack.
  • - Product taste is non-negotiable.
  • - Naturally curious and detail-oriented.
  • - High ownership.
  • - Has worked at a startup or somewhere with a genuinely high engineering bar.

Strongly Preferred
  • Built conversational UIs or chat interfaces with complex state
  • - Experience with LLM APIs (Anthropic/OpenAI) and prompt engineering
  • - Understanding of product management workflows

Our Stack

Frontend: Next.js 15, TypeScript, Tailwind, Radix UI

Backend: Next.js API routes, Inngest (event/queue), PostgreSQL/Supabase

AI: Vercel AI SDK, MCP protocol

Integrations: GitHub, Linear, Slack

Education: No degree required. We value product sense and technical execution over credentials.

Compensation

Salary: $150k-200k

Equity: 0.5-1.5% (early team member grant)

Benefits: Unlimited PTO

Visa Sponsorship: At this time, we cannot sponsor work visas. Applicants must be authorized to work in the US.

Work Environment

In-person, in our San Francisco office.

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