Product Development Engineer I (AI-Native) (Onsite role)

Sierra Ventures; United States; On-site; USD 80,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job summary

Phenom is an AI-powered talent experience platform redefining HR tech. We are seeking a Product Development Engineer (AI-Native) who turns ideas into validated product features and agentic capabilities, owning them from prototype to production.

You’ll prototype fast, then harden valuable work for customers, while building reusable agentic skills and ensuring observability. This role emphasizes end-to-end ownership and collaboration across teams.

Qualifications

• 1–4 years of software development experience.
• Bachelor's degree in CS/SE/IT; master’s degree preferred.
• Strong fundamentals in data structures, algorithms, and clean design.

Responsibilities

• Prototype and deliver AI-native features from idea to production.
• Design, build, validate features end-to-end.
• Develop reusable agentic skills and observability assets.
• Collaborate with reliability engineers on deployment and gates.

Skills

Programming proficiency

CS fundamentals

Software design principles

Version control

APIs & databases

Testing & debugging

Unix/Linux

AI tooling

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/SE/IT

Master's degree preferred

Tools

Git

SQL

NoSQL

Cloud platforms

Job description

Job Requirements

Product Development Engineer I (AI-Native) (Onsite role)

Job Description

Our purpose is to help a billion people find the right work! Phenom is an AI-Powered talent experience platform that is redefining the HR tech space. We have grown into a global organization with offices in 6 countries and over 1,500 employees. As an HR tech unicorn organization, innovation and creativity is within our DNA. Come help us make every talent moment Phenomenal!

We are looking for a Product Development Engineer (AI-Native) who takes ideas and customer needs and turns them into working, validated product features and agentic capabilities — owning them from first prototype to production. Here, everyone wears multiple hats: the same person who builds a feature also ships it, supports the people using it, and debugs issues directly. You own outcomes end-to-end, not a narrow slice.

What You’ll Do

• Build innovative products on the Phenom platform — prototype fast, then harden what proves valuable into something customers can rely on.
• Take ideas to production — design, build, and validate features end-to-end, then keep improving them after they ship.
• Build and improve reusable agentic skills — packaged, versioned capabilities anyone in engineering can compose and re-run, so the next build starts from a proven asset, not a blank page.
• Practice AI-assisted, increasingly agentic engineering — drive PRs with coding agents and your own custom skills, and wire each PR to also update the observability it depends on.
• Run a controlled debugging loop — work from logs, traces, and prior incidents to find and fix root causes quickly.
• Own delivery to customers — deployment gates and hypercare, partnering with reliability engineers on deep platform issues.
• Keep rich context for agents — maintain the structured, per-customer context that every agent and skill draws on before it acts.
• Respect the guardrails — analysis is separated from action, high-risk changes require human approval, and every decision is logged for audit.

What You’ve Done

• 1-4 years of software development experience.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Technology, or a related technical field required; Master's degree preferred.
• Strong fundamentals and critical thinking — AI raises the bar on judgment, it doesn’t replace it.
• Comfortable across the stack and building with modern AI coding tools and agents.
• Customer empathy — you can sit with a customer, ask the right questions, and decide which problems are worth solving.
• End-to-end ownership — you finish what you start and keep improving it.
• Adaptable — eager to adopt new tools and reinvent your workflow as the tooling changes (often weekly).
• A strong communicator who aligns quickly with colleagues and customers.
• You thrive on variety — building, debugging, shipping, and customer calls in the same week.
• Bonus: experience building AI / agent products, workflow orchestration, observability, or building agent workflows on an Agent SDK.

Technical Skills

• Programming proficiency — write clean, maintainable code in at least one modern language (e.g., Python, Java, JavaScript / TypeScript, or Go).
• Computer science foundations — strong understanding of data structures, algorithms, complexity (Big-O), and decomposing problems into clean, testable components.
• Software design principles — object-oriented and functional concepts, clean-code practices, and sensible code and API design.
• Version control & collaboration — day-to-day fluency with Git, branches, pull requests, and code review.
• APIs & databases — working knowledge of REST APIs and JSON, plus basic SQL and data modeling with relational and/or NoSQL stores.
• Testing & debugging — writing unit and integration tests and diagnosing issues methodically from logs, traces, and stack traces.
• Command line & cloud (a plus) — comfort in a Unix / Linux shell, with exposure to a cloud platform (AWS, Azure, or GCP) and CI/CD concepts.
• AI tooling (a plus) — hands-on with modern AI coding assistants and familiarity with LLM or agent concepts.

How We Work

An AI-native engineering culture

• Big ownership, few meetings — we keep things small and autonomous, trust people to make local decisions, and protect focus time; alignment over ceremony, impact over output.
• AI-native, not AI-on-top — we continuously find where work slows down and apply agents and skills to remove the bottleneck across planning, code generation, review, testing, and support.
• Builders and platform engineers, side by side — deep infrastructure and reliability work keeps the platform stable while builders turn ideas into visible products fast. You’ll focus on building, partnering closely with platform and reliability engineers.
• Copilot before autonomy — agents start by analyzing, recommending, and drafting while engineers execute, and graduate to auto-remediating known-safe failures only after evaluations pass.
• AI is welcome in technical interviews — it’s how we work, so pair-programming and problem-solving with AI is a positive signal. (We’ll talk through behavioral and design topics without it.)

Salary

• Expected salary range $80,000-90,000

Please note the Salary range is subject to change in the future in accordance with Phenom’s policies

Benefits

We want you to be your best self and to pursue your passions!

• Benefits/programs to support holistic employee health
• Growing organization with career pathing and development opportunities
• Tons of perks and extras in every location for all Phenoms!

Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion

Our commitment to diversity runs deep! Diversity is essential to building phenomenal teams, products, and customer experiences. Phenom is proud to be an equal opportunity employer taking collective action to build a more inclusive environment where every candidate and employee feels welcomed.

We recognize there is more to be done. Our teams are committed to continuous improvement until these powerful ideas are ingrained in our culture for Phenom and employers everywhere!