Senior Product Engineer, Discourse Graphs

Astera Institute•Emeryville, CA

3d•$120,000 - $215,000•Remote

About The Position

Discourse Graphs is an open-source project that helps research teams document, link, and share questions, claims, and evidence through plugins for Roam Research and Obsidian backed by a shared database. The project is philanthropically funded and developed by a small distributed team across North America, Europe, and India, alongside research labs piloting the tools. Its data format has grown into MIRA, an open standard that other tools and AI agents can read. The Senior Product Engineer will join a distributed team of engineers, designers, and researchers building and testing new tools for collaborative science. The team works primarily in writing across time zones and has no managers; engineers select work from a shared queue, and progress is assessed by how researchers use the tools. Initial work may include enabling researchers and coding agents to read and write claims and evidence while viewing a team whiteboard; creating manuscript overlays that show a draft's claims and supporting evidence; and building research-institute knowledge bases from publications, notebooks, and meeting notes. The engineer will put early versions in front of researchers and use their interest to help determine which ideas develop further. The role also includes improving plugin onboarding so new users can get value within minutes. Working closely with a designer and a product manager, the engineer will turn promising ideas into prototypes and develop successful prototypes into maintainable products. The engineer can make technical decisions that are inexpensive to reverse and will discuss costly-to-reverse decisions with the tech lead. The team uses TypeScript, Supabase (Postgres), an MCP server, and a canvas built on tldraw. This is a fully remote, fixed-term position lasting 12 to 14 months, with some overlap with North American working hours. The employee may also work in person at Astera in Emeryville, California. The position may be held as a temporary Astera Institute employee or as a contractor at the same annual rate. The role is full-time, and the organization would like the successful candidate to start as soon as possible. Pay is $120,000 to $215,000 per year depending on location and experience.

Requirements

A 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 interface, data layer, and APIs that connect them.
Experience building with large language models, such as agent tools, MCP servers, or retrieval over structured data.
A habit of talking with users and working collaboratively with designers and other engineers.

Nice To Haves

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

Responsibilities

Build and test new tools for collaborative science with a distributed team of engineers, designers, and researchers.
Develop early versions of requested research workflows, such as tools for working with claims and evidence alongside coding agents, manuscript claim-and-evidence overlays, and research-institute knowledge bases.
Put prototypes in front of researchers and use their feedback and interest to guide further development.
Improve the plugins so new users can get useful results within minutes of installation.
Work closely with the designer and product manager to turn promising ideas from the team's ordered work queue into usable prototypes and maintainable products.
Make technical decisions that are inexpensive to reverse and discuss costly-to-reverse decisions with the tech lead.
Take responsibility for code produced with AI coding tools.