Staff Product Engineer, Backend

Who We Are:

Productboard helps product teams understand user needs, prioritize what to build, and rally everyone around their roadmap. Our platform is trusted by thousands of companies worldwide, including industry leaders like Microsoft, Zoom, and UiPath. Headquartered in San Francisco with a strong presence in Prague, we're a well-established company committed to innovation. We are currently enhancing our products with advanced capabilities, including sophisticated language understanding technologies, to deliver even greater value to our customers. Our culture champions employee voice, impact, and growth, fostering a collaborative and supportive environment.

The Opportunity:

Our Insights Experience team is at the heart of helping customers derive deep understanding from their user feedback. As a backend-focused Staff Product Engineer on this team, you'll play a pivotal role in building and enhancing the product features that make this possible.

You'll be working on features that heavily leverage modern AI techniques, particularly Large Language Models (LLMs) and methods like Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG). However, your primary focus will be on robust backend engineering for the product itself. You will build the application logic that thoughtfully integrates services from Productboard's internal AI platform and leading external providers (e.g., Google, OpenAI, Anthropic). Your work will involve a blend of core backend development and specialized tasks related to integrating and optimizing AI service usage for our product features.

This is an ideal role for an engineer who enjoys the challenge of building user-facing products that incorporate sophisticated technologies effectively. You'll need a strong product-oriented understanding of LLMs – how to best use them in a product context, what works well, and what doesn't. Working in a fast-paced, iterative environment, you'll collaborate closely with product managers, designers, and other engineers to translate product needs into reliable, scalable, and impactful backend solutions.

What You'll Do:

• Build and Scale Product Backends: Design, develop, and maintain the backend systems (primarily using Kotlin and Ruby) that power key features in our Insights product, many of which will incorporate advanced language processing capabilities.
• Deliver Robust Product Functionality: Take backend ownership for new product features, from technical design and integration of AI services through deployment and iteration, ensuring they are well-engineered, scalable, and meet user needs. You'll directly contribute to features that transform how product managers gain insights from user feedback by leveraging AI.
• Collaborate Effectively: Work closely with frontend engineers, product managers, designers, and engineers from our internal AI platform team, contributing your backend expertise to shape and deliver cohesive product experiences and provide valuable feedback on platform services.
• Solve Complex Technical Challenges: Apply your problem-solving skills to a variety of technical challenges, including those related to integrating advanced third-party services, optimizing for performance and cost, and ensuring robust error handling for complex product logic.
• Contribute to Engineering Excellence: Help refine best practices for building and maintaining high-quality product backends, focusing on scalability, maintainability, and the effective use of modern technologies.
• Continuously Learn and Grow: Develop your expertise in building sophisticated product features and working with modern backend technologies in a supportive, product-driven environment.

What You'll Bring:

• Solid Backend Engineering Experience: 5+ years of experience designing, building, and maintaining scalable backend systems for user-facing product features.
• Product-Oriented Understanding of Modern AI: Practical experience or a strong understanding of how to apply modern AI techniques, particularly LLMs and related methods (like RAG and prompt engineering), to build effective product features. You understand the practicalities and nuances of using these technologies in a real-world product context.
• Strong Product Mindset: You are pragmatic, user-centric, and focused on delivering value through the product. You possess good product intuition, enjoy collaborating with product managers and designers, and can contribute effectively to discussions about how technology can solve user problems.
• Excellent Technical Foundation: Proficiency in backend languages (we primarily use Ruby and Kotlin; experience in similar languages like Python, Java, or Go is valuable). A good understanding of system design, API development, data modeling, and experience with scaling and optimizing backend systems. This includes managing operational aspects and costs, especially when integrating external services.
• Good Collaboration and Communication Skills: A proven ability to work well within diverse teams and clearly explain technical concepts, product decisions, and AI-related capabilities and limitations to various audiences.
• Adaptability and Passion for Learning: A genuine desire to learn and adapt, especially regarding how new technologies can be practically applied to improve products. You prioritize effective, efficient solutions and are keen to understand what makes product features succeed.
• User-Centric and Responsible Approach: You consistently prioritize users and understand the importance of building reliable and trustworthy product experiences, including considerate data handling and awareness of ethical considerations related to AI features.

Nice to Haves:

• Deep expertise in our primary tech stack (Ruby, Kotlin, Python, Postgres, DuckDB, AWS).
• Specific experience building backend systems that successfully integrate LLM-powered features into a product.
• Familiarity with frameworks or tools common in the applied AI space.

Why Productboard?

Join a company that is a recognized leader in product management. You'll have the opportunity to work on challenging and meaningful problems, contributing to a product used by thousands of teams worldwide. We offer a competitive salary, stock options, comprehensive benefits, and a culture that fosters growth and impact.

This role is based in our San Francisco office with an office-centric hybrid schedule (in-office Monday, Tuesday, Thursday; optional WFH Wednesday, Friday).

The Offer:

• Competitive base salary
• Stock options
• Robust 401k plan
• Life insurance and disability coverage
• Best-in-class health benefits, including One Medical Membership
• Subsidized gym and wellness memberships
• Commuter benefits
• Mental wellness programs, including Headspace access
• Generous paid time off (4 weeks vacation + 9 sick days)
• Parental leave (8-12 weeks)
• Annual volunteer day
• Daily office lunches
• Professional development budget
• Regular team events

Salary range: $190,000 - $240,000. The pay range for this job level is a general guideline only.  Multiple factors, such as your location, experience, depth of knowledge, as well as internal equity, may be considered in extending an offer.

About Productboard

Productboard is the customer-centric product management platform that helps organizations get the right products to market, faster. Over 5,500 companies, including Zoom, One Medical, Cartier, Microsoft, and Korn Ferry, use Productboard to understand what customers need, prioritize what to build next, and rally everyone around their roadmap.

With offices in San Francisco, Brno, and Prague, Productboard is backed by leading investors like Tiger Global Management, Dragoneer Investment Group, Index Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Credo Ventures.

In January 2022, we closed our $125M Series D round, which put us into the Unicorn category of companies, with a valuation of $1.7B.

• Join at the golden startup age — established stability of a Unicorn with space for individual impact.
• You’ll enjoy an exciting team atmosphere, building a whole new category of software.
• You can help change the way that products are built all over the world.
• We iterate quickly, and decisions are fast. You’ll have a voice in what we do and see the impact of your work.
• We are backed by top Silicon Valley investors, giving us access to capital, networks, mentors, and new markets.
• We are recognized as one of the hottest tech startups on the market today, named by Forbes magazine and Business Insider as one of the best startup employers to bet your career on.

About our culture

Imagine working in a place where everything matters — most importantly, you. At Productboard, values aren’t just something we like to talk about, they’re something we live and breathe. We believe in creating a work environment where:

• People feel empowered, supported, and included
• Trust and transparency are built into the way we work
• Creativity, curiosity, and continuous improvement are encouraged and nurtured every day

Forming our company values was a group effort, with every employee allowed to contribute. From profit-sharing initiatives, like stock options, to open calendars and communication, we don’t waste time on politics or ego. We champion openness by sharing our goals, successes, and failures.

Join colleagues who are passionate about what they do. Team members who are invested in their work environment, and the future of Productboard. Help shape our company, culture, and product!

Check out our LinkedIn Life page, or listen to our People of Productboard podcast for a real feel of what life is like at Productboard.

Equal Opportunity Employer Statement

We are an equal opportunity employer and champion equity. We aim to help people from all backgrounds, cultures, and groups realize their full potential at Productboard. We do not tolerate any discrimination or harassment based on gender identity, race, color, religion, age, sexual orientation, non-disqualifying physical or mental disability, national origin, veteran status, or any other bias covered by appropriate law. All aspects of employment, including hiring, training, promotion, and terminations, are based on merit, competence, performance, and business needs. We are committed to an inclusive hiring process and provide all candidates with equal opportunity to demonstrate their abilities. Togetherness is one of our core values, and our Diversity Council helps to ensure that we uphold the values of authenticity, humanity, and diversity to create an environment where every person matters. We are committed to leading by example to drive societal change.

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