Senior Product Engineer (Frontend-focused)

About Wordware Wordware (https://www.wordware.ai/) is a YC-backed AI lab based in San Francisco. It raised the largest seed round in YC history ($30M) and had the #1 Product Hunt launch of all time. Investors include Paul Graham, Mathilde Collin, Swyx and others. Their product, Sauna, is an AI assistant that does the work instead of just answering questions. Users connect it to the tools they already use (Gmail, Calendar, Slack, Linear, Notion and thousands of others), and it runs 24/7 in the cloud on its own computer, whether or not the user is online. In practice, it can: Send a morning briefing built from your calendar and emailDraft replies in your voice, ready for approvalFile a Linear ticket from a Slack threadTurn repeated requests into scheduled routines, or build small apps with their own UI and databaseUsers can reach it through web, iOS, iMessage, Slack, email, or Superhuman. Every person has their own assistant with its own memory, and assistants on the same team can talk to each other. Customers are founders and function leads at companies of 1–100 people. The team is about 20 people, based in the Presidio, San Francisco. About the role You'll own the product surface of the assistant: the interfaces people use to hand work to it, watch it happen, trust the result, and come back tomorrow. This is a product role with a frontend center of gravity. You'll follow problems wherever they lead: interaction design, client architecture, API routes, DB migrations, analytics. The team moves fast. You'll start from a rough direction or a Slack thread, sketch the interaction, ship a first version, and iterate from feedback. PRDs and Figma files come after your first cut. What you'll work on Delegation primitives: handing work to the assistant, following progress, interrupting, approving, and undoing, for tasks that run from seconds to overnightMemory made visible: surfaces where users see what the assistant has learned about them, correct it, and watch it improveRoutines and apps: surfaces where users request real software (its own backend, data and URL), then install and monitor itConnected assistants: real-time shared sessions where several people and one assistant work in the same threadOne assistant, every surface: the same assistant, memory and identity across web, mobile, Slack, Superhuman and email, including onboarding from a single text messagePerformance as a feature: a local-first client (TanStack Query + IndexedDB) that opens instantly on a 10,000-message historyFirst-time experience and billing: the funnel from landing page to trial to paying team What we're looking for You've shipped and owned complex web products after launch, such as multiplayer experiences, large-data apps with a real fetching and caching strategy, or streaming/realtime UIsYou have strong product taste and act on it: given a rough direction, you sketch, build, and defend the tradeoffsYou know React deeply: state management, re-renders, and components others want to reuseYou're comfortable owning full-stack features end to end: migration, route, fetch, UI, analyticsYou care about performance and can explain your caching, invalidation, and optimistic-update choicesYou care about craft: loading and empty states, error copy, keyboard shortcutsYou use AI heavily in your own workflow and have opinions on where it helps and where it doesn'tYou're autonomous and low-ego, and you ship without waiting for a specTrajectory matters more than tenure. Stack TypeScript, React, TanStack (Query, Router, DB), Zustand, TailwindCSS, IndexedDB, WebSockets over Cloudflare Durable Objects, Cloudflare Workers, Postgres (Neon). Strong fundamentals matter more than an exact stack match. Nice to have UI experience on LLM products: streaming, uncertainty, progressive disclosure, non-determinismReal-time collaboration (CRDTs, Y.js, Automerge or similar)Local-first architectures and sync strategiesDesign background or a strong visual senseExperience as a founding or early frontend engineer Logistics On-site in San Francisco (Presidio), 5 days a weekYou must be based in the Bay Area or willing to relocate before startingUS work authorization required; O-1 or J-1 visa sponsorship is possible for exceptional candidates Compensation & benefits $180K–$240K base, plus meaningful early-stage equityHealth, dental, 401(k), generous PTO, gym budget, lunch Interview process Exceptional candidates can go from first contact to offer within two weeks. Application: resume, links, and one thing you've shipped that you're proud of (a demo video or live link is best)15-minute intro callSystem design interview on a real product problemFinal conversation and work-trial scopingPaid in-person work trial (a few days to two weeks)