Product Engineer (Contract)

Accountabilities:

• • Take ownership of the product from its current working state through launch, user adoption, and subsequent iterations.
  • Complete remaining feature development, remove or hide unfinished functionality, and make pragmatic decisions about what is ready to ship.
  • Improve the product's aesthetics, usability, and overall user experience so it feels polished and production-ready rather than like a prototype.
  • Resolve known bugs, expand automated and manual test coverage, and improve overall software quality and reliability.
  • Conduct a security-hardening pass ahead of the first external users and collaborate with external security expertise when required.
  • Deploy the product to alpha users and create an onboarding experience that enables users to reach meaningful value without constant founder or engineering assistance.
  • Communicate directly with early users, respond to support requests, identify recurring friction points, and translate real-world feedback into product improvements.
  • Add appropriate instrumentation and analytics to understand actual user behavior and distinguish observed usage from assumptions or stated preferences.
  • Help turn alpha learnings into the beta roadmap and contribute to decisions around the most appropriate initial customer segment.
  • Build the technical systems, documentation, and development practices needed to enable a future engineering team to take ownership of the product.
  • Work effectively across the existing stack, including vanilla JavaScript, HTML, CSS, Supabase, PostgreSQL, Netlify, Node.js tooling, and AI provider APIs.
  • Use agentic coding tools as a core part of the development workflow while independently reviewing, testing, and validating their output.
  • Make thoughtful technical trade-offs, identify potential downstream effects of changes, and maintain a strong understanding of the overall system.
  • Partner directly with the founder on execution while taking ownership of the engineering decisions required to move the product forward.

  Requirements:

  • Demonstrated experience shipping a real product using an agentic coding harness such as Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Aider, or an equivalent tool as a primary development environment.
  • The product you built using an agentic coding workflow must have been used by people other than yourself; candidates should be able to explain what they built, what the AI tools got wrong, and how they identified and corrected those issues.
  • Strong software engineering fundamentals, with the ability to read unfamiliar code carefully, understand system-wide dependencies, identify subtle bugs, and anticipate the consequences of technical changes.
  • Demonstrated ability to take a product from development through launch and ongoing support rather than stopping once the core implementation is complete.
  • Strong product instincts and user empathy, with the ability to recognize when technically functional software may still provide a poor or confusing user experience.
  • Experience working independently in ambiguous environments where requirements are not reduced to a predefined ticket queue and where you are expected to determine what needs to happen next.
  • Willingness and ability to communicate directly with users, investigate real-world problems, and incorporate feedback into product decisions.
  • Experience with JavaScript, HTML, and CSS; familiarity with vanilla JavaScript and single-file or minimally abstracted applications is particularly relevant.
  • Experience with or willingness to work across Supabase/PostgreSQL, Netlify, Node.js, and third-party AI APIs.
  • Strong judgment around AI-assisted development, including the ability to verify generated code rather than accepting confident but incorrect output.
  • A demonstrated track record of finishing and supporting projects is more important than formal credentials, years of experience, recognizable employers, or a specific educational background.
  • No specific degree, number of years of experience, startup background, or prior security specialization is required.
  • Candidates should be comfortable working full-time, approximately 40 hours per week, with overlap into US morning and/or evening hours.
  • Shortlisted candidates will be expected to discuss a shipped project built with an agentic coding harness, demonstrate their approach to product execution, and complete a coding interview.

  Benefits:

  • Contract engagement with a full-time commitment of approximately 40 hours per week.
  • Fully remote opportunity open to candidates based in India.
  • Two-month initial engagement, starting immediately, with the possibility of continuation.
  • Significant autonomy and ownership over engineering execution and product delivery.
  • Direct collaboration with a founder and close exposure to product decisions, early users, and real-world feedback.
  • Opportunity to work hands-on with an AI orchestration product integrating leading frontier AI models.
  • Broad product ownership spanning engineering, UX, testing, deployment, observability, user onboarding, and iteration.
  • Opportunity to work with an intentionally lightweight technology stack without unnecessary framework complexity.
  • Evaluation focused on demonstrated judgment, shipping ability, and practical engineering skills rather than degrees, years of experience, or brand-name employers.
  • Opportunity to shape a product from its working foundation through real-world launch and early customer adoption.