Founding Full-Stack Product Engineer

SteelTree; Los Angeles (CA); Hybrid; USD 160,000 - 260,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Founder equity included

Hybrid in Los Angeles

Job summary

SteelTree is seeking a Founding Full-Stack Product Engineer in Los Angeles, a hands-on, product‑led building role. You will shape the technical foundation and product experiences, collaborating with the founding team to grow the company.

This early-stage position blends engineering with product thinking, data workflows, and AI-powered features, with ownership and potential leadership as the team scales.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of hands-on building real software, with ownership over shipping features.
• Experience working with AI tools, LLMs, AI agents, or AI-powered workflows.
• Strong frontend, backend, database, and API experience with a product focus.

Responsibilities

• Build across the full stack and AI-powered product experiences.
• Shape onboarding, activation, and growth flows in a product-led company.
• Define engineering culture, standards, and architecture as the team grows.
• Collaborate with founders and users to turn feedback into product improvements.
• Recruit, mentor, and help grow future engineers.

Skills

Full-stack development

AI/ML experience

Frontend development

Backend development

API design

Data workflows

Strong communication

Product sense

Ownership

Tools

ClickHouse

DuckDB

LLM tooling

Job description

About The Role

SteelTree is hiring a Founding Full-Stack Product Engineer to help build the core product, shape the technical foundation, and play a major role in how the company grows.

About The Role

SteelTree is hiring a Founding Full-Stack Product Engineer to help build the core product, shape the technical foundation, and play a major role in how the company grows.

This is a hands‑on founding engineering role, but it is not only an engineering role. SteelTree is an early‑stage, product‑led company, which means the product, onboarding, user experience, data workflows, AI experience, and growth motion all have to work together. The person in this role should be comfortable building software, improving user flows, thinking through product usage, and helping with the small‑team work that turns a product into a company.

We care about what you have built. Experience matters, but shipped work matters more. We are generally looking for someone with 5+ years of experience, but we are open to anyone who has built and launched real software, worked with AI tools, deployed products, and shown they can move fast with ownership.

This person will work directly with the founding team and will grow into a leadership role as the engineering team is built out.

Location: Hybrid in Los Angeles. We meet in person about once a week. This is an LA‑area hybrid role, not remote anywhere in the US. US‑based only, no visa sponsorship at this time.

What you'll do

You will build across the full stack, work on AI‑powered product experiences, design practical workflows for users, and help turn messy operational data into useful insight and action.

You will also help shape SteelTree's product‑led growth motion. That means thinking about activation, onboarding, time‑to‑value, product usage, trial behavior, conversion paths, and the overall experience that helps users understand the product quickly.

As the company grows, future engineers will report into this role. This person will help define the engineering culture, technical standards, product architecture, and pace of execution.

What you'll work on

• Build and ship full‑stack product features
• Work on AI agents, LLM workflows, and AI‑powered user experiences
• Use AI coding tools and agentic development workflows to move faster
• Build systems for data upload, parsing, analysis, insight generation, and action tracking
• Work with structured and semi‑structured data from CSVs, spreadsheets, APIs, databases, and operational systems
• Build analytics‑style product experiences using modern data workflows
• Work with OLAP‑style databases or analytical engines such as ClickHouse, DuckDB, or similar systems
• Build reliable backend services, APIs, database models, and frontend experiences
• Help deploy, monitor, and scale production software
• Improve onboarding, activation, and product‑led growth flows
• Work closely with users and the founding team to turn feedback into product improvements
• Help with technical content, product demos, growth experiments, and customer‑facing product work when needed
• Help recruit, mentor, and lead future engineers

What we're looking for

• Strong full‑stack product builder
• Experience building and shipping real software
• Experience working with AI, LLMs, AI agents, or AI‑powered workflows
• Comfortable using AI development tools to build faster and better
• Strong frontend, backend, database, and API experience
• Strong product sense and care for user experience
• Experience with analytical data workflows, OLAP databases, or large‑scale data processing is a plus
• Ability to deploy and operate production software
• Comfortable working in a fast‑moving startup with limited structure
• Willing to help outside of strict engineering work when needed
• Strong communication skills
• High ownership, low ego, and strong judgment

You may be a strong fit if

• You have built products from scratch.
• You care about product usage, not just code quality.
• You are excited about AI, but grounded in building real software for real users.
• You understand that in a product‑led company, product experience is part of growth.
• You can move between engineering, product, data, AI, UX, and customer feedback.
• You want to help build the engineering team, not just join one.

This is not a good fit if

• You only want to work on one narrow part of the stack.
• You do not want to think about users, onboarding, growth, or product adoption.
• You need a fully defined roadmap before starting.
• You prefer large teams, long planning cycles, and highly structured environments.
• You are not comfortable using AI tools as part of your development workflow.

Compensation

Founder equity included. Salary discussed in interview.