AI Engineer — AI-Native Product Engineering

Francisco Partners; Mountain View (CA); On-site; USD 118,000 - 212,000; Full time

Job summary

NewsBreak is seeking an AI Engineer - AI-Native Product Engineering in Mountain View, CA. This frontend-leaning role collaborates across AI-enabled features, APIs, and backend services to ship production products end to end.

You will own frontend architecture, leverage AI to accelerate development, and ensure quality, performance, and reliability for consumer-scale experiences as part of an AI-native team.

Qualifications

• 3+ years of software engineering with frontend focus.
• Strong JS/TS fundamentals and React experience.
• Experience shipping user-facing features in production.
• Ability to design or modify APIs or backend services.
• Hands-on use of AI coding tools in real development work.
• Strong debugging, testing, and performance mindset.
• Quickly learn unfamiliar technologies and expand into adjacent parts of the stack.

Responsibilities

• Build user-facing products end to end.
• Use AI as a core development tool.
• Own frontend architecture and quality.
• Cross frontend/backend collaboration to complete product experiences.
• Review outputs of AI-generated code with tests and rollback mechanisms.
• Improve the AI-native engineering workflow and tooling.
• Modernize existing systems for maintainability.
• Own production outcomes through performance monitoring and incidents.

Skills

Frontend Eng

JavaScript/TypeScript

React

API design

AI tools

End-to-end ownership

Perf optimization

Rapid learning

Product mindset

Tools

React

Job description

About NewsBreak

Founded in 2015, NewsBreak is the Content Intelligence platform shaping the future content economy. With over 40 million monthly active users, our flagship platform delivers highly personalized local news and information powered by advanced AI, recommendation systems, and adtech.

Recognized by Fast Company as #32 on the Top Workplaces for Innovators, we’re proud to be Great Place to Work® certified and home to a dynamic team of technologists, product innovators, and business leaders who are passionate about solving meaningful challenges at scale.

Together, we reached unicorn status in 2021, and we remain committed to continuing this high-growth trajectory with the right team to fulfill our mission: building the infrastructure layer for content intelligence.

If you’re inspired to dream big, innovate fast, and make a difference, we’d love to hear from you! For more information, visit www.newsbreak.com/about

AI Engineer - AI-Native Product Engineering

Location: Mountain View, CA

About the Team

We are rethinking how software is built in an AI-native world.

AI is becoming the default way we design, build, test, debug, and operate software. Engineers on this team work with coding agents to ship production products quickly, while setting the architecture, context, quality standards, and guardrails that make AI-generated software reliable.

This role is frontend-leaning, but not frontend-limited. We are moving away from traditional frontend/backend boundaries. You will start from strong client-side product engineering skills and use AI to work effectively across APIs, backend services, data flows, and developer tooling.

The expectation is simple: own the problem end to end, not just one layer of the stack.

What You’ll Do

• Build user-facing products end to end. Own features from product requirements and frontend architecture through API integration, backend changes, testing, rollout, and production metrics.
• Use AI as a core development tool. Work with coding agents to generate, refactor, test, debug, and understand code, while providing the context and validation needed for production quality.
• Own frontend architecture and product quality. Build maintainable component systems, state and data flows, performance-sensitive experiences, and reliable testing patterns for consumer-scale products.
• Cross frontend/backend boundaries. Make the API or backend changes needed to complete a product experience rather than handing work off at team boundaries.
• Set a high bar for AI-generated code. Review outputs critically and use automated tests, observability, staged rollout, and rollback mechanisms to verify correctness.
• Improve the AI-native engineering workflow. Turn repetitive development work into reusable agent workflows, tooling, conventions, and playbooks that make the team faster.
• Modernize existing systems. Refactor legacy frontend and service code incrementally so both engineers and AI agents can understand and modify it safely.
• Own production outcomes. Investigate performance issues, regressions, and incidents using logs, metrics, experiments, and AI-assisted debugging.

What We’re Looking For

• 3+ years of software engineering experience, with strong depth in frontend or client-side product engineering.
• Strong JavaScript/TypeScript fundamentals and hands-on experience with React or a comparable modern frontend framework.
• Experience shipping meaningful user-facing features in production and making frontend architecture decisions around components, state, data flow, performance, or testing.
• Evidence that you can work beyond the frontend layer — for example, designing or modifying APIs, backend services, data contracts, or developer tooling.
• Hands-on use of modern AI coding tools or coding agents as part of real development work, not only occasional autocomplete.
• Strong engineering fundamentals and the ability to reason about system behavior, debugging, reliability, testing, and performance.
• Ability to learn unfamiliar technologies quickly and use AI effectively to expand into adjacent parts of the stack.
• Strong product mindset: you care about user experience and business outcomes, not just implementation.
• Comfortable operating in a fast-moving environment where engineers help define the solution rather than simply execute a detailed specification.

Bonus Points

• Experience building AI-native or agent-powered user experiences.
• Experience building or operating coding agents, LLM workflows, or developer productivity tools.
• Backend experience with Java, Kotlin, Python, Node.js, or similar technologies.
• Experience with recommendation, feed, search, ads, growth, or other large-scale consumer products.
• Experience improving web performance, experimentation infrastructure, design systems, or CI/CD quality gates.
• Experience shipping 0→1 products in a small, highly autonomous team.

Annual Base Pay Range

$118,000 - $212,000 USD

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