Product Engineer

Forage; San Francisco, New York (CA, NY); Hybrid; USD 145,000 - 195,000; Full time

Job summary

Forage is seeking Product Engineers who turn customer problems into thoughtful, high-quality products. You’ll own experiences from problem definition through launch and iteration, working across frontend, backend, APIs, data models, and infrastructure.

You will collaborate with Product, Design, Solutions Engineering, and customers to understand problems and shape solutions. We value curiosity, pragmatic thinking, and the ability to move quickly while maintaining quality.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.
• 4+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• Experience building and shipping customer-facing products from concept through production.
• Strong product instincts and an ability to understand the why behind what you're building—not just the technical requirements.
• Experience working across the stack and a willingness to move between frontend, backend, APIs, and infrastructure depending on what the product needs.
• Ability to operate effectively in ambiguity, break down complex problems, and independently drive projects forward.

Responsibilities

• Own product features end-to-end from understanding the customer problem through design, development, launch, and iteration.
• Partner with Product and Design to shape product requirements and determine the best solution for customers.
• Talk with and learn from customers and customer-facing teams to identify pain points and opportunities to improve products.
• Build across the stack, including frontend interfaces, backend services, APIs, data models, and infrastructure.
• Turn ambiguous problems into simple, intuitive, and scalable product experiences.
• Prototype and iterate quickly to validate ideas and get useful products into customers' hands.
• Use customer feedback, product data, and business context to continuously improve what you've built.
• Make thoughtful tradeoffs between speed, quality, scalability, and customer impact.
• Take responsibility for the quality and reliability of the products you ship including testing, deployment, monitoring, and debugging.
• Contribute to product and technical strategy as Forage expands its platform and builds new products.
• Improve the tools, systems, and engineering practices that help the broader team build and ship better products.

Skills

Strong product instincts

Customer empathy

System design

Testing and debugging

Communication

Ownership

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or equivalent

Tools

Python

Django

TypeScript

React

React Native

AWS

Job description

The Role

We're looking for Product Engineers who are passionate about understanding customer problems and turning them into thoughtful, high-quality products.

As a Product Engineer at Forage, you'll own product experiences from problem definition through launch and iteration.

You'll work closely with Product, Design, Solutions Engineering, and customers to understand what we're solving, help shape the solution, and then build it across the stack.

This isn't a role where engineering begins once a fully defined set of requirements is handed over. We expect Product Engineers to bring strong product judgment, technical expertise, and customer empathy to the development process. You'll ask questions, challenge assumptions, make tradeoffs, prototype solutions, and help determine what we should build—not just how we should build it.

You'll have the autonomy to move across our frontend experiences, backend services, APIs, data models, and infrastructure to deliver complete solutions. Our stack includes Python, Django, TypeScript, React, React Native, and AWS, but we're more interested in engineers who can learn quickly, make good decisions, and ship great products than engineers who check every technical box.

We hire engineers across multiple levels, from mid-level individual contributors to senior and staff-level technical leaders. The exact level will be determined through our interview process based on experience, technical expertise, product judgment, scope of ownership, and demonstrated impact.

What You'll Do

• Own product features and experiences end-to-end, from understanding the customer problem through design, development, launch, and iteration.


• Partner closely with Product and Design to shape product requirements, evaluate tradeoffs, and determine the best solution for customers.


• Talk with and learn from customers and customer-facing teams to understand pain points, workflows, and opportunities to improve our products.


• Build across the stack, including customer-facing interfaces, backend services, APIs, data models, and infrastructure.


• Turn ambiguous problems into simple, intuitive, and scalable product experiences.


• Prototype and iterate quickly to validate ideas and get useful products into customers' hands.


• Use customer feedback, product data, and business context to continuously improve what you've built.


• Make thoughtful technical and product tradeoffs between speed, quality, scalability, and customer impact.


• Take responsibility for the quality and reliability of the products you ship, including testing, deployment, monitoring, and debugging.


• Contribute to product and technical strategy as Forage expands its platform and builds new products.


• Improve the tools, systems, and engineering practices that help the broader team build and ship better products.

What We're Looking For

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.

4+ years of professional software engineering experience.

Experience building and shipping customer-facing products from concept through production.

• Strong product instincts and an ability to understand the why behind what you're building—not just the technical requirements.


• Experience working across the stack and a willingness to move between frontend, backend, APIs, and infrastructure depending on what the product needs.


• Ability to operate effectively in ambiguity, break down complex problems, and independently drive projects forward.


• Strong understanding of software engineering fundamentals, including system design, testing, debugging, performance, and maintainability.


• Experience collaborating closely with Product, Design, and customer-facing teams.


• Ability to balance speed and pragmatism with long-term technical quality.


• Strong communication skills and a willingness to share perspectives, challenge assumptions, and incorporate feedback.


• A strong sense of ownership—you care about whether the product actually solves the customer's problem, not simply whether the code works.

Preferred Technical Experience

Experience with some or all of the following:

• Backend: Python, Django, REST APIs


• Frontend: TypeScript, React, HTML/CSS


• Mobile: React Native


• Infrastructure: AWS, cloud-native architectures


• Systems: Distributed systems, asynchronous processing, scalable APIs


• Data: Relational databases, data modeling, query optimization


• Engineering Practices: Automated testing, CI/CD, observability, monitoring, and modern development workflows

You don't need experience with every technology in our stack. We're looking for engineers who are curious, pragmatic, customer-focused, and comfortable owning a problem from idea to impact.

The best Product Engineers at Forage won't just ask, "How should we build this?" They'll also ask, "Are we solving the right problem, and is there a better way to solve it?"

Our Offer

This role is Hybrid in New York or San Francisco, we will consider remote within North America on a case-by-case basis. We define hybrid as 2-3 days in office.

Your base salary would fall within the bands below. Please keep in mind that the equity portion of your offer is not included in these numbers and represents a significant part of your total compensation.

• Expected salary range:$145k-$195k USD base salary, plus equity and benefits. Depending on Experience


• Meaningful work that makes a positive impact on our society.


• 100% of Medical, Dental and Vision premium coverage for yourself and dependents.


• Enjoy regular team lunches at our New York or San Francisco offices, fostering collaboration and connection over great food.


• A fun and caring environment that prioritizes transparency, growth, and ownership.


• A talented, high-achieving, and humble team with diverse backgrounds and viewpoints.