Staff Product Engineer

Data; Northern (KY); Hybrid; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Candid is a nonprofit focused on data and insights for the social sector. We seek a Staff Product Engineer to serve as the engineering foundation of an AI-native product team, delivering end-to-end solutions with high agency and impact.

You will collaborate closely with a product manager and designer, ship ambitious features in production, and elevate engineering practices across the organization.

Qualifications

• 7-10 years of relevant experience.
• Hands-on software engineering with end-to-end ownership.
• Fluency with AI-assisted development tools and production AI features.
• Strong architectural judgment across the full stack.
• Genuine product sense and collaboration with product/design.

Responsibilities

• Own engineering end-to-end for the team—from product surface through backend, infrastructure, deployment, and operations.
• Use AI-assisted development to multiply your output and enable a one-engineer team.
• Build AI capabilities into the product with careful evaluation, guardrails, and proper scope.
• Partner with the product manager and designer as an equal in discovery and delivery, focusing on customer outcomes.
• Raise the bar across engineering with reference implementations, reusable patterns, and sharing learnings via demos.
• Set a standard for quality in code, tests, and documentation.

Skills

7-10 yrs exp

Full-stack engineering

AI-powered features

Architectural judgment

Product collaboration

Mentorship/influence

High agency

Job description

Candid is a nonprofit that provides the most comprehensive data and insights about the social sector. We get you the information you need to do good. Candid currently has an opportunity for a Staff Product Engineer. We’re looking for an engineer who’s excited to build in service of that mission. You’ll be the engineering foundation of a new, AI-native product team built on an empowered product-team model – a product manager, a designer, a data lead, and you. You will build and ship end-to-end, partner with the product manager and designer as an equal in shaping what we build and why, and set a visible, organization-wide example of what excellent, AI-accelerated engineering looks like. This is a high-agency, high-visibility individual-contributor role: rather than managing a team of engineers, you create leverage through modern AI tooling, strong technical judgment, and a mandate to demonstrate a better way of building and bring the wider engineering organization along with you. This is a multi-role position, requiring the mental capacity to understand the engineering side end to end, understand and drive to desired business outcomes, and influence others to follow the path you are trailblazing. If you are looking for a role with autonomy, maximum impact, and never a dull moment, this could be for you.

Responsibilities

• Own engineering end-to-end for the team – from product surface through backend, infrastructure, deployment, and operations – as a self-sufficient individual contributor.
• Use AI-assisted development (agentic coding tools, code generation, and LLMs in your workflow) to multiply your own output and make a one-engineer team genuinely viable.
• Build AI capabilities into the product where they create real value – LLM integration, prompt and context engineering, retrieval, and agentic patterns – with sound judgment about evaluation, guardrails, and where AI does and does not belong.
• Partner with the product manager and designer as an equal in discovery and delivery: bring a point of view on the customer and the problem, pressure-test direction, and keep the team focused on outcomes over output.
• Raise the bar across engineering by producing reference implementations, reusable patterns and scaffolds, and sharing what you learn through demos, writing, brown-bag sessions, and pairing so other teams can adopt what works.
• Set a standard for quality in code, tests, and documentation that other engineers want to learn from and build upon.

Skillset

• 7-10 years of relevant experience
• Extensive, hands-on software engineering experience, with a track record of independently owning and shipping significant systems end-to-end without scaffolding or hand-holding.
• Demonstrated fluency with AI-assisted development tools, and hands-on experience building AI-powered product features in production – not solely experimentation or prototyping.
• Strong architectural judgment and pragmatic build / buy / simplify instincts across the full stack.
• Genuine product sense: curiosity about users and the problems being solved, and a history of partnering closely with product and design rather than working from tickets.
• Evidence of force-multiplication – making the engineers around you better through example, mentorship, reusable work, or influence without formal authority.
• High agency and a bias to action; comfortable with ambiguity, accountable for outcomes, and effective without management overhead.
• Comfort with visibility – willing to have your work held up as an example and to actively champion better engineering practices across the organization.
• Willingness to perform other duties and special projects as needed/requested.
• Sensitivity and respect for racial, gender, sexual orientation, and cultural differences.
• Champions and represents Candid’s core values: We’re driven, direct, accessible, curious, and inclusive.

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