Software Engineer, Product

Thinking Machines Lab•San Francisco, CA

1d•$300,000 - $350,000•Onsite

About The Position

Thinking Machines is hiring a full-stack engineer to conceive, build, and ship AI-powered products from the ground up. The role focuses on early-stage product ideas that explore emerging model capabilities, taking them from prototype to useful products that people can rely on, often within weeks. The engineer will work at the intersection of product, design, and research, partnering with researchers to turn model capabilities into interfaces and experiences and with product and design partners to determine what to build. The role may be the first engineering position assigned to a product idea, with ownership of both its technical direction and product development. The position is based in San Francisco, California, or New York, New York.

Requirements

At least 5 years of professional software engineering experience, with demonstrated ownership across frontend and backend systems.
A strong track record of shipping production web applications end to end, from data model and API design through polished user-facing interfaces.
Comfort working in ambiguous, fast-changing environments where product direction is still being discovered.
Experience making pragmatic technical tradeoffs to move quickly without accumulating unmanageable risk.

Nice To Haves

Experience building products on large language models or other frontier AI systems, including working around their quirks and limitations.
Strong product sense and enjoyment of determining what is worth building as well as how to build it.
Experience as an early or founding engineer at a startup, or leading a product from 0 to 1.
Familiarity with modern frontend frameworks and a good eye for interface design and usability.
Experience with distributed systems, infrastructure, or backend performance work at scale.
A history of working closely and effectively with researchers, designers, or other non-engineering partners.

Responsibilities

Design, build, and ship full-stack features for web applications, from backend services and APIs to production-quality frontend interfaces.
Prototype with new and emerging model capabilities and turn research results into usable product experiences.
Take product ideas from rough concepts to live products for users, iterating based on feedback.
Partner with researchers to understand model behavior, constraints, and capabilities, and translate them into product decisions.
Work with design and product partners to define what to build.
Own the technical architecture of products, including scalability, reliability, and maintainability decisions.
Help establish engineering practices and technical standards for a growing product engineering team.