Principal Product Engineer

Coforma•North Bethesda, MD

19h•Remote

About The Position

We are looking for an experienced, product-focused Principal Product Engineer with a strong frontend orientation to join our internal innovation lab at Coforma. The innovation lab is a small, autonomous team building a new product from scratch. We operate with the speed of a startup but the stability of an established company, with the goal of creating a new digital service that may grow into its own offering. As a Principal Product Engineer, you’ll be a deeply hands-on technical leader shaping how we design, build, and ship modern applications in a fast-moving R&D environment. Reporting to our Chief Innovation Officer (CINO), you’ll bring strong, opinionated, experience-backed judgment around frontend architecture, particularly in modern React and Next.js ecosystems, and make pragmatic decisions that balance speed of learning with long-term maintainability. You’ll mentor other engineers, model a strong product-engineering culture, and help the team navigate the ambiguity that comes with early-stage product development and experimentation. This is a full-stack role with a frontend center of gravity: candidates are expected to lead from the frontend, setting patterns for React and Next.js applications, data-fetching strategies, UI and state architecture, and overall product experience, while also being comfortable owning backend services and APIs as needed. You’ll help build the foundational frontend and application platform for our innovation lab from the ground up, often operating as the primary builder and working in close collaboration with a small set of product, design, and leadership partners to quickly test, iterate, and ship new modular products. This role is intentionally scoped for early-stage execution before a dedicated team is hired. We’re looking for engineers who enjoy building quickly with modern web frameworks and who can also design and build systems that hold up as products grow and mature. If you’re passionate about improving lives through digital products and services, Coforma is a great company for you. $174,399 to $187,006 Annual Salary + Benefits + Growth Potential Placement within this range will be based on the competency level of the candidate. An offer will be made at one of the following tiers: Tier 1 - $174,399.60: Meets minimum qualification/experience requirements. Beyond onboarding, will need additional guidance and training to perform key responsibilities of the role. Tier 2 - $181,543.68: Experienced and fully competent. Will be able to independently perform key responsibilities of the role once onboarding is completed. Tier 3 - $187,006.80: Highly experienced and can perform all responsibilities of the role at a higher level than expected once onboarding is completed. To honor our company-wide equitable pay system, the posted salary range and corresponding tier salaries are non-negotiable. This is a US-based remote position open to applicants in the states listed below. Some travel may be required. To ensure we remain compliant with all state, county, and local employment and tax regulations, applicants must currently reside in one of the following states to be considered for employment with Coforma. This list will be updated periodically as our People team works to open up hiring in additional states. Arizona California District of Columbia Florida Georgia Idaho Illinois Maine Maryland Massachusetts Montana Nevada New Jersey New York North Carolina Oregon South Carolina Tennessee Texas Virginia Washington Wisconsin

Requirements

Minimum of 8 years of professional software engineering experience in product-oriented environments, with a strong frontend focus
Deep hands-on experience building production applications in Next.js, including modern React patterns, App Router, and TypeScript
Strong backend experience in Node.js, with preference for NestJS, and comfort owning API design end-to-end
5+ years of experience designing, building, and consuming APIs including GraphQL and REST, and deploying to modern cloud environments (preferably GCP)
Proven track record of shipping full-stack web applications from prototype to production, with particular strength in frontend architecture, performance, and developer experience
4+ years of experience leading technical direction or serving as tech lead/architect on complex products
Deep experience with React/TypeScript and at least one modern back-end stack (Node, Python, Go, etc.)
Proven track record of shipping full-stack web apps from prototype to production
Comfortable operating in startup-style ambiguity, designing experiments, measuring outcomes, and iterating quickly based on real user feedback
Full-time resident of the contiguous United States (must be legally authorized to work in the US now and in the future without sponsorship)
Strong grasp of the building blocks of the web (HTTP, HTML, CSS, JavaScript/TypeScript, JSON, TLS/SSL), with particular depth in modern frontend application architecture
Deep experience with React and Next.js, including routing, data fetching patterns, performance optimization, and building resilient, user-centric UIs that interact cleanly with APIs
Solid backend engineering fundamentals, with hands-on experience building cloud-native Node.js services (preferably NestJS), including API design (GraphQL preferred), data modeling, and service boundaries
Practical experience implementing secure authentication and authorization flows (OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, SAML), and designing APIs that are safe to consume from browser-based clients
Familiarity with event-driven and asynchronous processing, distributed caching, observability and logging, and modern persistence patterns that support frontend-driven product experiences
Capable of delivering application architectures and code that are highly scalable, available, and performant
Understanding of security and compliance implications (SOC 2, HIPAA, FedRAMP) for SaaS-style products and ability to design with them in mind
Skilled at tailoring technical communication for executive leadership and non-technical stakeholders and able to explain complex trade-offs in plain language to influence decisions and align teams

Responsibilities

Serve as technical lead for early-stage innovation lab projects, working closely with the CINO and our Product, Design, and Delivery teams to shape technical direction for prototypes and new products and guiding design and implementation decisions
Mentor engineers and collaborators, sharing best practices and fostering a culture of collaboration, psychological safety, and continuous learning in an agile, experiment-friendly environment
Enable modern DevSecOps practices such as automated testing, CI/CD, infrastructure-as-code, and secure-by-default engineering
Participate in business development and strategy efforts (proposals, presentations, etc.), when needed
Rapidly prototype, validate, and iterate on new product ideas, balancing speed of learning with scalable, maintainable code
Select and implement modern frameworks (React/TypeScript, Node, Python, etc.) and cloud services (containerized APIs, event-driven services, etc.) that enable fast experimentation
Identify and mitigate technical risks early; clearly communicate trade-offs to non-technical stakeholders
Support experimentation with AI-driven capabilities (LLMs, data pipelines, agentic tools) where appropriate
Contribute reusable libraries, documentation, and internal tools that accelerate future innovation lab projects
Partner with IT and Security teams to ensure prototypes run in sandboxed, compliant environments suitable for R&D