Senior Product Engineer

Senior Product Engineer

Full time

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Palo Alto, CA | Onsite

5 - 10 Years of Experience

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Who is Recruiting from Scratch:

Recruiting from Scratch is a premier talent firm that focuses on placing the best product managers, software, and hardware talent at innovative companies. Our team is 100% remote and we work with teams across the United States to help them hire.

Senior Product Engineer

Location - Palo Alto, CA (Onsite – 5 Days per Week)

Compensation - $180,000 – $250,000 Base + Competitive Equity

Visa - Visa Sponsorship Available

Company Stage - Early-Stage AI Startup

Industry - AI, LegalTech, Enterprise Software, LLM Applications, Workflow Automation

About the Company

The company is building an AI-powered legal technology platform that transforms one of the most complex and high-impact professional workflows by combining experienced domain experts with modern AI systems.

Its platform leverages large language models, AI-assisted workflows, and automation to help legal professionals manage complex case work, streamline document preparation, and improve operational efficiency across high-volume legal processes.

Backed by leading venture investors and led by an experienced founding team, the company is rapidly scaling its engineering organization while maintaining a high engineering bar and AI-native development culture. Engineers own products end-to-end—from backend architecture and APIs to frontend experiences and AI-powered product capabilities.

As a Senior Product Engineer, you'll work directly with the founders and internal domain experts to build AI-powered software that solves meaningful real-world problems while shipping production features at startup speed.

This is a rare opportunity to join an early-stage AI company where every engineer directly shapes product strategy, engineering culture, and customer impact while building software used in high-stakes real-world workflows.

What You'll Do

• Own product features end-to-end across backend services, frontend applications, and AI-powered workflows

• Design and build scalable APIs, backend services, and production application architecture

• Design database schemas and backend systems supporting production applications

• Build AI-powered product features leveraging LLMs and machine learning models

• Develop user-facing experiences using modern frontend technologies

• Partner directly with internal domain experts to understand workflows and rapidly build solutions

• Build production-grade software using AI-assisted development tools

• Collaborate closely with founders to shape product direction and engineering priorities

• Prototype new product capabilities rapidly and iterate based on user feedback

• Design scalable backend infrastructure supporting AI-powered workflows

• Conduct code reviews and mentor engineers through engineering best practices

• Contribute across the full technology stack whenever needed

• Ideal Candidate Background

• Experience Requirements

• 5+ years of experience as a Full-Stack Software Engineer or Product Engineer

• Experience building and shipping production software end-to-end

• Experience working at a high-growth startup, leading technology company, or as a founding engineer

• Experience owning product features from concept through production deployment

• Experience building customer-facing software products

• Experience conducting code reviews and mentoring junior engineers

• Experience collaborating closely with cross-functional stakeholders

• Startup experience strongly preferred

• Demonstrated ability to thrive in fast-paced, high-ownership environments

• Technical Requirements

• Strong Python engineering skills

• Experience building backend services using FastAPI or similar backend frameworks

• Strong PostgreSQL and relational database experience

• Comfortable working across frontend and backend systems

• Experience building AI/LLM-powered applications

• Daily user of AI coding tools such as Cursor, Claude Code, or Codex

• Strong API design and backend architecture fundamentals

• Experience building scalable production software

• Familiarity with React, TypeScript, or modern frontend frameworks

• Strong debugging, testing, and software engineering best practices

Education

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related technical field preferred

• Strong academic background from a top engineering program preferred

• Top-20 Computer Science program strongly preferred for candidates with fewer than 5 years of experience

• Soft Skills

• Strong product mindset

• High ownership mentality

• Excellent communication skills

• Strong collaboration with technical and non-technical stakeholders

• Comfortable operating in ambiguity

• Self-directed and proactive

• Bias toward execution

• Startup mentality

• Strong work ethic and ability to thrive in high-intensity environments

• Preferred Backgrounds

• AI application startups

• LegalTech companies

• Product engineering organizations

• Enterprise SaaS startups

• Early-stage venture-backed startups

• Founding engineering teams

• AI-native software companies

• Full-stack product engineering teams

• Engineers building LLM-powered customer products

• High-growth technology companies

• Compensation & Benefits

• Base Salary: $180,000 – $250,000

• Competitive Equity Package

• Direct collaboration with founders

• Significant ownership over product development

• Opportunity to build AI-powered customer products

• High-impact engineering role

• Exposure to cutting-edge AI development workflows

• Rapid career growth opportunities

• Onsite collaboration with a high-performing engineering team

• Visa Sponsorship Available

• Why Join

• This is an opportunity to help build AI-powered software that solves meaningful real-world problems while transforming complex professional workflows.

• You'll own features from backend architecture through frontend experiences while working closely with founders, domain experts, and AI technologies to ship products used by real customers.

• As an early product engineer, you'll have outsized influence on engineering culture, product direction, and customer impact while building practical AI applications in one of the fastest-growing AI software companies.

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