Founding Product Engineer

ABOUTThe Persona Labs is building a new kind of social platform focused on something most social products do not explicitly optimize for: helping people become real friends.We want to help people discover interesting people around them, find meaningful common ground, start low-pressure interactions, continue promising conversations, create shared experiences, and ultimately build real-life friendships.DISCOVER → CURIOSITY → COMPATIBILITY → INTERACTION → UNDERSTAND → IRL EXPERIENCE → FRIENDSHIPTHE AI LAYERAlongside the platform, we are building a proactive personal companion that learns about the user and helps them navigate this journey through personalized recommendations, suggestions, reminders and experiences.THE OPPORTUNITYWe are looking for a Founding Product Engineer to help build the platform from the ground up. This is a 0→1 product engineering role where you work directly with the founder and engineering team to turn ambiguous product problems into working software.You will be expected to:Understand the problem → explore solutions → make trade-offs → design → build → ship → measure → improve.WHAT YOU WILL BUILD & OWNMOBILEOnboarding, profiles, discovery, interactions, messaging, activities, and companion experiences.SOCIAL SYSTEMSRelationships, social graph, compatibility, and interaction flows.BACKENDAPIs, services, authentication, notifications, and background processes.DATAPostgreSQL models, user/activity data, analytics, and behavioural signals.REAL-TIMEMessaging, live interactions, notifications, and event-driven workflows.AI-ENABLEDRecommendations, personalization, and companion-powered experiences.INFRASTRUCTURECloud deployment, CI/CD, monitoring, reliability, and cost management.WHAT YOUR DAY-TO-DAY LOOKS LIKE• Build and ship mobile and full-stack product features end-to-end.• Design APIs, database models, and backend services for a social product.• Translate ambiguous product problems into simple, reliable technical solutions.• Make architecture and engineering trade-offs for performance, scalability, security, and cost.• Work closely with the founder, product/design team, and Companion Intelligence engineer.• Prototype quickly, test assumptions, and iterate based on user behaviour and product feedback.• Own features from problem → architecture → implementation → deployment → improvement.• Help establish engineering practices around testing, monitoring, security, and reliability.WHO SHOULD APPLY• Experience: 0–4 years, including exceptional fresh graduates. Strong 1–3 year engineers and experienced 3–4 year product builders are welcome.• Fundamentals: Strong CS/software engineering fundamentals.• Evidence of Building: We value what you have built more than the number of years on your résumé. Shipped apps, strong side projects, hackathons, internships, open source, or startup work are highly valued.• Mindset: High ownership, curiosity, strong fundamentals, clear communication, learning velocity, and the ability to work through ambiguity.WHAT WE LOOK FORMOBILE CAPABILITYCan you build and ship a polished mobile experience?ENGINEERING DEPTHDo you understand why a system works, not just how to make it run?PRODUCT JUDGMENTCan you determine what should be built when the problem is ambiguous?ARCHITECTURE / SYSTEMSCan you reason across APIs, databases, services, real-time systems, scale, and cost?SPEED OF EXECUTIONCan you move from idea → prototype → production quickly without compromising fundamentals?AI FAMILIARITYDo you understand how modern AI can become a useful, reliable product capability?BUILD WITH USYou will join at a stage where many answers do not exist yet. You will not simply implement someone else’s architecture, you will help decide what the architecture and product should become.CAREERS:Apply with your resume, GitHub, portfolio or shipped work.[hidden]