Senior Product Engineer

Caffeine; Zürich; Hybrid; CHF 140,000 - 170,000; Full time

Job summary

Caffeine in Zürich is seeking a Senior Product Engineer to own features from idea to production, collaborating with design and product to shape what gets built. You’ll move quickly from prototype to live product, ensuring it actually works for users.

In a small team, you’ll tackle end-to-end problems across the stack (TypeScript, React, Node.js, SQL/NoSQL), use AI to accelerate learning, and push for strong UX and robust architecture, delivering value within days.

Qualifications

• Shipped products where you owned product decisions.
• Ability to use AI to build faster.
• Focus on UX and user experience.
• Comfort working in small teams.
• Ambiguity managed with structure and action.

Responsibilities

• Take product problems end-to-end from data model to deployed interface.
• Prototype fast, ship often, and instrument everything.
• Collaborate with product and design to shape what gets built.
• Push back when UX or architecture is off and offer alternatives.
• Use AI tools to move through unknowns and accelerate delivery.

Skills

Product ownership

Rapid prototyping

AI fluency

Cross-functional collaboration

Tools

TypeScript

React

Node.js

SQL/NoSQL

Job description

About the Role

As a Senior Product Engineer on our Product Engineering team, you'll own features from idea to production — and stay accountable for whether they actually work for users. Depending on where the biggest challenges are, you could be working across our Core ai, Apps, Marketplace, or Integrations.

This isn't a role where someone hands you a ticket. On Monday you might prototype a new conversation-to-application flow with a designer. By Wednesday you're debugging a tricky inference issue. By Friday it's live and you're watching how users respond. The cycle is short because the team is small and the surface area per person is large.

What You'll Actually Do

• Take product problems end-to-end — from data model to deployed interface — without waiting for someone to scope a lane for you
• Prototype fast, ship often, and instrument everything so you know what's working before anyone asks
• Push back when something doesn't feel right — UX, architecture, scope — and bring an alternative, not just the objection
• Use AI aggressively to move through unfamiliar territory — we build AI tools, and we expect you to use them to build faster than any one person should be able to
• Work directly with product and design to shape what gets built, not just how

You Might Be a Great Fit If…

• You've shipped products where you owned the product decisions, not just the technical ones — and you can point to something real that users loved
• You instinctively reach for AI when facing an unfamiliar part of the stack — not because you can't learn it, but because you know the faster path to a working solution
• You care as much about how software feels as how it's built — a clunky interaction bothers you the same way a bad abstraction does
• Ambiguity doesn't stall you — you create enough structure to move, then stop structuring and ship
• You close loops without being prompted — options, not problems
• You're energised by small teams where your work reaches real users within days, not quarters

Practicalities

• Location: Zürich, Switzerland — full-time on-site. We don't offer remote or hybrid arrangements.
• Stack: TypeScript across the stack — React, Node.js, SQL/NoSQL. Familiarity matters more than years.