About this role
About the Role
This is a hands-on, generalist product engineering role at an early-stage ambient AI consumer startup, where you will own the app experience end-to-end across iOS, Apple Watch, and Mac alongside the shared backend surfaces that power them. You will work directly with product leadership, making real tradeoffs on the fly and shipping user-facing improvements quickly, with no large team buffer between you and the product.
What You'll Do
- Own app features end-to-end across iOS, watchOS, and Mac, working directly with product leadership and without a fully-specified backlog.
- Ship user-facing improvements that address real issues surfaced from early product use, including wearable interaction reliability and cross-platform feature detection.
- Move fluidly between UX, UI, backend, and AI/ML depending on what each feature needs, making scope and design tradeoffs independently.
- Integrate agent and LLM-based features, including tool use, memory, and retrieval, into the consumer app experience.
- Collaborate with a specialist engineer on shared backend and pipeline surfaces.
- Take features from design through ship through iteration based on real user feedback, without waiting for the next instruction.
- Work across time zones with an Asia-based R&D, hardware, and supply-chain team.
What We're Looking For
- 3 or more years shipping consumer product features end-to-end across at least two of: mobile, desktop, wearable, or backend.
- Proficiency in Swift/SwiftUI for iOS and watchOS, with shipped apps to show for it.
- Proficiency with TypeScript, React, and Electron for Mac/desktop client development.
- Genuine, demonstrated capability across UX, UI, backend, and AI/ML, not deep in one area and dabbling in the rest.
- Hands-on experience building and integrating agent/LLM-based features into production consumer apps.
- Experience as one of the first engineers at an early-stage or pre-launch startup, shipping with minimal specification.
- Backend experience building shared services and APIs that power multiple client surfaces.
- A strong ownership mindset: you make the call, then implement it directly rather than handing off.
- Ability to work hybrid three days per week in the San Francisco Bay Area.
- Nice to have: experience with real-time or streaming systems such as audio processing or live data pipelines.
- Nice to have: prior work at an AI-native consumer app or hardware-adjacent startup.
- Nice to have: experience with wearable devices, hardware, or robotics product development.
Compensation & Benefits
Salary range: $150,000 to $200,000 USD annually. Equity offered. Visa sponsorship is not available for this role.
Location
Hybrid, three days per week in the office. Primary location: San Francisco Bay Area, California, United States.