The roleWe're looking for a driven, detail-oriented product engineer to join our team in Seattle. You'll work across our Next.js frontend and Node/Express backend, with a focus on extending, hardening, and polishing the user experience. You'll do this through deep understanding and refinement of our application layer architecture - making decisions around application architecture, where it makes sense to augment the user experience with AI, and "build vs buy" decisions on frameworks, tools, and libraries.
What you'll do- Design and build product features across our map, tables, filters, and AI/assistant experiences in Next.js (TypeScript + React).
- Implement and evolve backend routes and APIs in Node/Express that back those interactions, working closely with shared types and our existing services.
- Get your hands dirty in our postgres environments from time-to-time, in support of full end-to-end development (we're not kidding when we say full stack).
- Own architectural decisions around our application layer and integration points with external services.
- Partner with design and product to scope features, trade off complexity vs. value, and ship iterative improvements quickly.
- Help uplevel our interaction patterns: better abstractions, cleaner boundaries between front end / back end / shared types, and a smoother developer experience.
You might be a good fit if you...- Have experience leveraging agentic coding workflows to augment and up-level your output.
- Have 5+ years of experience building production web applications with TypeScript, React, and a Node-based backend.
- Are obsessed with the details of the user experience. Vibe coding makes it easy to add surface area to a product, but you care deeply about making the experience great.
- Have familiarity and a strong stance on testing fundamentals (Integration, E2E, unit tests). Tests are a major part of our quality firewall, and we expect you to raise the bar here for us.
- Have worked at a startup before and are familiar with the effort and focus it takes
- Care about system structure - it's never been easier to ship code, and you know how to complement that speed with rigor
- Have previous experience in any of the following: geospatial tooling, land analysis, AI-powered research tools, Investment tooling, map-based experiences
- Are based in Seattle and energized by in-person collaboration at least 2 days a week (whiteboarding, pairing, and quick feedback loops with the team).
Our stack- Frontend: TypeScript, Next.js (App Router), React, React Query, Tailwind, MapLibre, shadcn/ui
- Backend: Node.js/Express, TypeScript, Postgres/PostGIS, DuckDB, pgvector, BAML-based LLM agents
- Infra: AWS, PMTiles, Wherobots, Datadog
Working at AardenAarden is a high-trust, high-output team. We're striving to be intentional about our team growth. This allows us to test the outer boundaries of our individual capabilities, while also going deeper on developer tooling and support. You'll work hard here, and we've got your back.
Practically, this means you'll be asked to take on large projects, have a high bar of expectations to meet, and have a strong support system to help you meet that high bar. That support system includes:
- At least 2 in-person days per week at our office in Capitol Hill | We've found that while heads-down time at home is fantastic for task-related productivity, in-person time is magic for longer-form productivity. Our in-person days are used to plan, troubleshoot, and check-in with each other on progress and questions. Expect team lunches and whiteboarding.
- Focused ownership in your role | The rest of the team is here to help you and cares deeply about the long-term functionality of our applications. With that said, we'll be looking to you to own your lane, go deep, and develop a strong stance on what it takes to make our applications best-in-class.
- Dedicated monthly AI tooling budget | We're in a golden era of AI-powered developer tooling. We strongly encourage augmenting your output with AI tools, and have a dedicated & flexible budget for every team member to support that setup. We care about what you ship, not how.
CompensationThe base pay range for this role is $150,000 - $180,000 per year.
