Senior Product Engineer, Discourse Graphs

Astera Institute•Emeryville, CA

2d•Remote

About The Position

Join the Discourse Graphs team as a senior product engineer to help build tools for collaborative science. Discourse Graphs is an open-source project that helps research teams write, link, and share questions, claims, and evidence through Roam Research and Obsidian plugins backed by a shared database. Its data format has developed into MIRA, an open standard readable by other tools and AI agents. The project is philanthropically funded and developed by a small distributed team working with research labs that pilot its tools. You will work with engineers, designers, and researchers to design, build, and test new ways to support collaborative research. The team works primarily in writing across time zones, without managers; engineers select work from a shared queue, and progress is judged by how researchers use the tools. Initial projects may include enabling researchers and coding agents to read and write claims and evidence during research, manuscript overlays showing claims and supporting evidence, or institute knowledge bases built from publications, notebooks, and meeting notes. You will put early versions in front of researchers and develop the ideas that show promise. You will also improve the plugins’ onboarding so new users can get useful results soon after installation. Working closely with a designer and a product manager, you will turn promising ideas into prototypes and develop successful ones into maintainable products. You may make technical choices that are inexpensive to reverse, while discussing more consequential choices with the tech lead. The stack includes TypeScript, Supabase (Postgres), an MCP server, and a tldraw-based canvas. This is a fully remote, fixed-term, full-time role for 12 to 14 months, as either a temporary employee of the Astera Institute or a contractor. The role has some overlap with North American working hours; in-person work at Astera in Emeryville, California is also possible. The role is fixed-term because its funding is fixed-term, and the team will communicate openly about funding. Pay is $120,000 to $215,000 per year depending on location and experience. The team would like the successful candidate to start as soon as possible. Everything built is open source.

Requirements

Record of shipping user-facing products from early prototype to products people rely on.
Fluency in TypeScript and a modern front-end stack.
Comfort working across the user interface, data layer, and APIs.
Experience building with large language models, such as agent tools, MCP servers, or retrieval over structured data.
Habit of talking with users and working collaboratively with designers and other engineers.
Uses AI coding tools regularly and takes responsibility for the resulting code.

Nice To Haves

Experience with knowledge graphs, research software, or a scientific field.

Responsibilities

Build and test tools that support collaborative science and help researchers document, connect, and build on research.
Develop prototypes for requested research workflows, including agent-enabled claim and evidence workflows, manuscript claim-and-evidence overlays, and research-institute knowledge bases.
Put early versions of products in front of researchers and use their interest and feedback to guide further development.
Improve the plugins’ onboarding so new users can get useful results within minutes of installation.
Work with the designer and product manager to turn promising ideas from the shared work queue into prototypes and maintainable products.
Make technical choices that are inexpensive to reverse and discuss more consequential choices with the tech lead.
Take responsibility for code developed using AI coding tools and for what is committed to the repository.
Collaborate with users, designers, engineers, and researchers throughout product development.