Senior Product Builder (Engineering Focus)

a16z-speedrun; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 200,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Unlimited PTO

Job summary

Brief is the context navigator for product teams. We aggregate business context and make it legible to people and AI agents through chat, Slack, CLI, and voice. We hire Product Builders with engineering focus and a strong sense for UX and user empathy.

The role centers on engineering, with ownership of frontend features, collaboration with founders, and building AI-enabled workflows that even AI agents use. We value taste, judgment, and a long tenure in software.

Qualifications

• 6+ years as a software engineer.
• Strong TypeScript and React fundamentals.
• Product taste is non-negotiable.
• Naturally curious and detail-oriented.
• High ownership.
• Has worked at a startup or with a high engineering bar.

Responsibilities

• Define, design, and build features end-to-end without handoff.
• Build customer-facing UI that is fast, opinionated, and polished.
• Work directly with the founders on product direction—no PM layer, no design queue.
• Use AI agents in daily workflow and build AI-powered products.
• Find whats broken, confusing, or missing and fix it proactively.
• Drive architecture decisions, not just implementation.

Skills

TypeScript

React fundamentals

Full-stack capable

Product sense

Ownership

Startup experience

Tools

Next.js

Tailwind

Radix UI

Inngest

PostgreSQL/Supabase

Vercel AI SDK

Job description

Job Description

Brief is the context navigator for product teams. We aggregate business context (decisions, customer research, work pipeline, team knowledge) and make it legible to both people and AI agents through chat, Slack, CLI, and voice.

We believe the boundaries between product, design, and engineering are dissolving. The scarce resource is no longer engineering hours; it's taste, judgment, and the conviction to ship. So we hire Product Builders who wear all three hats and own whole things.

This is the engineering-focused shape of that role. Our bet: the disciplines blend, but the best builders still have a center of gravity. Yours is engineering, a long tenure writing real software, paired with genuine taste and discernment for UX, UI, and user empathy.

If you've spent the last year thinking hard about how AI changes the product-building loop, using Claude/Cursor/Copilot not as autocomplete but as a genuine collaborator, you might be exactly right for this.

About The Role

• Define, design, and build features yourself, start to finish. No spec, no handoff.

• - Build customer-facing UI that's fast, opinionated, and polished.

• - Work directly with the founders on product direction. No PM layer, no design queue.

• - Use AI agents in your daily workflow, and build products that AI agents use themselves.

• - Find what's broken, confusing, or missing and fix it before being asked.

• - Drive architecture decisions, not just implementation.

About You (Must Have)

• A long tenure as a software engineer. Roughly 6+ years.

• - Strong TypeScript and React fundamentals, comfortable across the full stack.

• - Product taste is non-negotiable.

• - Naturally curious and detail-oriented.

• - High ownership.

• - Has worked at a startup or somewhere with a genuinely high engineering bar.

Strongly Preferred

• Built conversational UIs or chat interfaces with complex state

• - Experience with LLM APIs (Anthropic/OpenAI) and prompt engineering

• - Understanding of product management workflows

Our Stack

Frontend: Next.js 15, TypeScript, Tailwind, Radix UI

Backend: Next.js API routes, Inngest (event/queue), PostgreSQL/Supabase

AI: Vercel AI SDK, MCP protocol

Integrations: GitHub, Linear, Slack

Education: No degree required. We value product sense and technical execution over credentials.

Compensation

Salary: $150k-200k

Equity: 0.5-1.5% (early team member grant)

Benefits: Unlimited PTO

Visa Sponsorship: At this time, we cannot sponsor work visas. Applicants must be authorized to work in the US.

Work Environment

In-person, in our San Francisco office.

Brief is an equal opportunity employer committed to building a diverse team.