Product Engineer

Kernel; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 100,000 - 140,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Industry-competitive salary

Above market equity

Premium medical + dental coverage

Unlimited PTO

Relocation assistance

Daily lunches

$1k / mo budget for LLM usage fees

401k + company match

Job summary

A cloud technology company in San Francisco seeks a Product Engineer. You will own and enhance the full-stack of user-facing products, synthesize feedback into roadmaps, and improve developer experience across multiple platforms. Ideal candidates have a strong understanding of developer tools and API design while thriving in a fast-paced startup environment. This position offers competitive salary, equity, medical coverage, and unlimited PTO, fostering a trusting and collaborative team environment.

Qualifications

• Comfortable owning a feature from frontend to backend.
• Experience building fast in a startup environment.
• Strong opinions and practical experience in developer experience.

Responsibilities

• Own the full-stack implementation of user-facing product surfaces.
• Synthesize customer feedback and usage patterns into the product roadmap.
• Improve Developer Experience (DX) across the SDK, docs, CLI, and API.
• Ship fast and iterate from prototype to production.
• Define what it means to build a great developer product at Kernel.

Skills

End-to-end feature ownership

Strong product instincts

Startup experience

Developer tools design

API design knowledge

Job description

About Kernel

Kernel is a developer platform that provides Crazy Fast Browsers-as-a-Service for browser automations and web agents. Our API and MCP server allow developers to instantly launch browsers in the cloud without managing infrastructure.

Our serverless browser platform handles the hard stuff: autoscaling reliable browser infrastructure, observability, and the messy details of web interaction so developers can focus on what their agents do, not how they do it. Kernel makes AI tangible, practical, and powerful, allowing developers to deploy agents that can truly interact with the digital world.

We’re used by teams at Cash App, Rye, and countless others for tasks like deep research, QA automation, and real-time web analysis. We've raised $22M from Accel, YCombinator, Vercel, Paul Graham, Solomon Hykes (Docker), David Cramer (Sentry), Charlie Marsh (Astral), and more.

One line of code deploys any web agent to our cloud. The rest is up to you. If you're interested in building critical infrastructure for the next generation of AI applications, we'd love to chat.

About the role

Product Engineers at Kernel are full-stack engineers who think about the product as much as the code. You know how to translate your strong product instincts into code, from pixel-level UI decisions to backend API design. You don't wait for a spec, you help write it.

You’ll work closely with our co-founders to set product direction, ship full-stack features end-to-end, and make Kernel feel as polished as it is powerful.

What you’ll do

• Own the full-stack implementation of user-facing product surfaces: dashboard, onboarding, website, and core product

• Shape the product roadmap by synthesizing customer feedback, usage patterns, and your own instincts about what developers need

• Drive DX improvements across our SDK, docs, CLI, and API. The kind of details that make developers say "this just works"

• Ship fast and iterate, from prototype to production with minimal hand-holding

• Help define what it means to build a great developer product at Kernel

What we're looking for

• You ship end-to-end: you're comfortable owning a feature from frontend to backend and getting it across the finish line

• You have product taste: you've thought hard about what makes developer tools feel magical vs. frustrating, and that thinking shows up in your work

• Startup experience: you've built fast, worn multiple hats, and figured things out without a playbook

• You build for developers deploying agents into the real world

• You have strong opinions about devEx and API design, and you know how to back them up with shipped work

What you can expect as a Kernel

• Industry-competitive salary

• Above market equity

• Premium medical + dental coverage + dependent coverage

• Small, trusting team of senior + staff engineers

• Default async with minimal bureaucracy, only two meetings a week

• $1k / mo budget for LLM usage fees #vibecheck

• Daily lunches on us

• Unlimited PTO

• 401k + company match

• Relocation assistance