Founding Product Engineer

Creandum; United States; Remote; USD 150,000 - 800,000; Full time

Job summary

Better Stack is hiring a Founding Product Engineer to lead from the trenches, writing high‑quality code, shaping product strategy, and mentoring a growing team. This is a senior, high‑impact role for someone who can ship quickly and think big.

You’ll own the end‑to‑end product, collaborate across design, data, and sales, and drive growth with viral features. Expect long hours, hands‑on leadership, and building a startup within a startup.

Qualifications

• Amazing full‑stack engineer with senior-level experience.
• Proven ability to lead technically and influence product direction.
• Comfort with shipping product from concept to production and mentoring others.

Responsibilities

• Lead the product engineering efforts end-to-end.
• Be the most active code contributor in the product’s GitHub repository during the first year.
• Analyze business models and generate new product ideas.

Skills

Full-stack development

Engineering leadership

Code contribution

Tools

GitHub

Job description

Founding Product Engineer

Hardcore

Remote (North America & Europe)

Prague

$150K - $400K/year + equity

$300K - $800K/year + equity

Please start by reading the description of the role.

You need to be an amazing full-stack engineer before moving to the Founding Product Engineering role.

You can also read about how we think about software and what it’s like to work here.

What you’ll do

• You’ll essentially run a startup within a startup.
• You’re ready to work extremely hard. This is a senior role with high expectations.
• Given enough time, you’d be able to build Better Stack from scratch and take others with you along the way.
• You’re an extremely strong .
• You can analyze business models and you’re the kind of person who constantly comes up with new product ideas.
• You’re able to validate your product idea with pre-product design interviews.
• You’re great at user experience and copywriting.
• You can design and build a simple, lovable, and complete product.
• You understand the difference between prototyping and production engineering.
• You’re not just a product manager or an engineering manager. During the first year of the product, you’ll be the most active code committer in the product’s Github repository. You’ll be leading your team by example from the front lines.
• You know that a product without distribution is useless, you read the Coldstart problem, and admire products with built-in virality.
• You’re a skilled engineering manager, both a people manager, and a strong technical leader.
• You love data and you watched Alex Schultz’s lectures on growth. You’re ready to watch the first 10,000 Fullstory session recordings of people using your product.
• You’re a decent sales person. You can hop on a podcast, give a lecture, and fly across the country for a product demo.

Why you should work with us

• Reading the above, you should be thinking: "if I can do all of those things, should I just start a startup myself?" Maybe you should! If that’s you, in fact you might be the perfect person for this job. Hear me out.
• Working with us, as opposed to starting your own startup, has multiple advantages:
• You know you’ll get paid. Most startups go to 0. With Better Stack you get no downside, yet an unlimited upside.
• You’ll have way less stress. You don’t have the balance sheet to worry about. You don’t need to calculate the runway till going bankrupt.
• Although you should be great at leading technical teams, we’ll help you with the ugly side of managing people. We’ll have your back.
• You don’t have to deal with legal, operations, compliance or VCs. You can fully focus on building great products. That’s a luxury most startup CEOs don’t have.
• You’ll learn a lot. You’ll work with the team who built Better Stack from the ground up. We’ve seen the story of building both successful and failed products many times. You’ll go faster with us.
• You can fully leverage Better Stack’s existing resources to make your product successful: our data processing infrastructure, consistent UI/UX language, the strong developer brand, and our strong existing distribution.
• There’s close to 0 bureaucracy & politics at Better Stack. Your success will be fully in your hands.
• ...and you can always start your company afterwards!