Staff Backend Engineer, Productboard

• Proven Engineering Experience & Leadership: You bring over 8+ years of engineering experience, demonstrating a history of designing, building, and maintaining scalable backend systems for user-facing product features, with a proven track record of technical leadership
• Product-Oriented AI Application Experience: You have significant practical experience and a strong understanding of applying modern AI techniques (LLMs from providers like OpenAI, Gemini, Anthropic; methods like RAG and prompt engineering) to build effective product features, especially in contexts like feedback analysis and summarization relevant to Productboard Pulse
• You can articulate trade-offs and guide teams in sound technical decisions
• Pragmatic, User-Centric & Business-Oriented: Your focus is on balancing craft, speed, and business impact
• You possess excellent product intuition, enjoy collaborating with product managers and designers, and can contribute strategically to how technology, especially AI, can solve user problems and achieve business goals
• You consistently prioritize users and understand the importance of building reliable, trustworthy product experiences
• Strategic Problem-Solver & Strong Technical Foundation: You excel at breaking down complex problems into manageable solutions, considering both technical and business implications
• You have proficiency in backend languages (we primarily use Ruby and Kotlin; experience in similar languages like Python, Java, or Go is valuable) and a deep understanding of distributed system design, API development, data modeling, and extensive experience with scaling, optimizing, and operating backend systems, including managing costs for external AI services
• Leadership, Enablement, and Mentorship: You have a demonstrated ability to lead technical initiatives, mentor engineers, and effectively enable teams to adopt new technologies or practices
• Experience creating technical documentation, conducting workshops, or developing shared tools is highly desirable
• Empathetic Communicator & Team Player: You articulate complex technical ideas, architectural decisions, and AI-related capabilities clearly to various audiences, both in writing and verbally
• Collaborative by nature, you work effectively within diverse teams, respecting different viewpoints and finding compromise when necessary
• Your commitment goes beyond personal achievement, focusing also on the growth and learning of your teammates
• Adaptability and Passion for Learning: You are eager to take on new challenges and have a genuine desire to learn and adapt, especially regarding how new technologies can improve products
• You prioritize effective, efficient solutions, are keen to understand what makes product features succeed, and actively explore innovative ways to leverage AI, with a keen interest in advancing Productboard Pulse
• User-Centric and Responsible AI Approach: You consistently prioritize users and understand the importance of building reliable, trustworthy product experiences
• This includes a strong commitment to considerate data handling, awareness of ethical considerations for AI features, and ensuring responsible AI practices

Desirable

• Our Insights Experience team is at the heart of helping customers derive deep understanding from their user feedback, with Productboard Pulse as a flagship AI initiative
• This platform is important for setting Productboard apart in its market by making sure our customers really understand what users need
• As a Staff Backend Engineer for AI Enablement on this team, you’ll take a pivotal leadership role: architecting and building features for Pulse, and enabling other engineering teams to use AI effectively for this initiative and related product goals
• You'll build features using modern AI techniques like Large Language Models (LLMs) and Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG)—integral to Productboard Pulse
• You’ll focus on designing and building robust backend systems and foundational services, integrating capabilities from our internal AI platform and leading external providers (like Google, OpenAI, Anthropic)
• You'll do more than just code; you'll need to understand how your work helps our customers and influences our product direction, especially in driving the success of a strategic AI product like Pulse
• You'll work with different functions, like product managers, designers, and other engineers, to bring your technical skills and understanding of product development together
• This role is about making a real difference in how we build products and coming up with practical, scalable AI-driven solutions that matter to our users
• Architect and Scale AI-Powered Backends: You’ll have a significant hand in designing, developing, and maintaining scalable backend systems (Kotlin, Ruby) that power Productboard Pulse
• You will lead the architectural vision for integrating LLM capabilities, focusing on scalability, maintainability, and cost-effectiveness, directly impacting our users as you ship your contributions to production
• Deliver Robust Product Functionality for Pulse: Take backend ownership for new Productboard Pulse features, from technical design and AI service integration through deployment and iteration
• You’ll drive the technical execution of features that transform how product managers gain insights, ensuring high engineering quality and product impact
• Lead and Enable AI Feature Development: Act as a technical leader and subject matter expert for LLM integration (OpenAI, Gemini, Anthropic, etc.)
• You’ll develop and champion best practices, reusable patterns, and internal tooling to help product engineering teams efficiently build AI-powered features, providing mentorship and technical guidance
• Strategic AI Service Integration & Optimization: Evaluate and select appropriate external LLM services for various use cases
• You’ll design and implement strategies to optimize the performance, cost, and reliability of these integrations, particularly for Productboard Pulse, and develop common infrastructure to streamline access
• Collaborate and Influence Technical Direction: Work alongside product managers, designers, frontend engineers, and our internal AI platform team
• Your collaborative efforts and expert backend/AI integration advice will be essential in influencing product and technical strategy for Productboard Pulse and ensuring alignment on AI adoption
• Solve Complex Technical Challenges: Bring your creativity and deep problem-solving skills to resolve challenging technical and architectural issues—integrating advanced third-party services, designing for multi-tenant AI systems, ensuring robust error handling, and managing the operational aspects of AI-driven features within Pulse
• Drive Engineering Excellence: Champion and refine best practices for building high-quality, scalable product backends, particularly those incorporating AI
• You’ll proactively identify opportunities for innovation and technical improvement
• Continuously Learn, Grow, and Mentor: Experience personal and professional growth by developing your expertise in building sophisticated product features and working with modern backend technologies
• You’ll stay at the forefront of advancements in LLMs and applied AI, sharing knowledge and mentoring other engineers, focusing on applications relevant to Productboard Pulse