Product Engineer

Job Description

We know applying for jobs is exhausting. Endless text full of buzzwords and requirements you'll never actually use. We'll skip that.

We're vvd. We make tools for storytellers — worldbuilders, writers, creators. Our goal is simple: empower people to create worlds, stories, and experiences that others can get lost in.

We're still at the beginning of our own story, and we're looking for a few people to help write the next chapters.

In a moment where "AI creative tools" are pumping out slop on one side and vicious debate on the other, we're choosing a different path: use this technology to empower human creativity and craft, not replace it.

This isn't going to be easy — but you'll actually shape something real. Something that will reach millions of people. You'll own it end-to-end, in a way that leaves a mark you can point to and say: I built that.

What a Product Engineer means at vvd

A Product Engineer here is a more technical Design Engineer.

You still care deeply about taste, feel, motion, and craft. But you also go further down the stack: data models, APIs, performance, reliability, and the messy systems work needed to ship great product.

You are also extremely comfortable with AI tooling. You use it daily (Cursor, Claude Code, etc.) to explore solutions, generate and refine code, debug faster, and ship at a pace that would be hard to match otherwise.

What you’ll do

• Build features end-to-end: product thinking → implementation → launch → iteration.
• Partner tightly with design and engineering to turn ambiguous ideas into shipped product in days, not weeks.
• Own UI craft and the underlying technical decisions that make experiences fast, reliable, and scalable.
• Shape how we build: patterns, primitives, component quality, testing, and internal tooling.
• Use AI tools as a multiplier. You prompt well, iterate quickly, and maintain a high quality bar.
• Communicate directly and clearly. No corporate padding.

Requirements

What we care about

Experience helps, but it’s not a gate. If you’ve built and shipped real things — jobs, side projects, experiments — and you can walk us through what you built, why you built it that way, what broke, and how you solved it, you’re good.

Ownership matters more than pedigree.

Specifically

• Strong product engineering fundamentals (TypeScript, React, Next.js or similar).
• Enough backend understanding to build features without getting blocked (APIs, auth, data flow, persistence, basic infra concepts).
• Taste. You can feel what’s working and what isn’t — and you can fix it.
• You can go from a rough idea to a polished implementation without waiting for a perfect spec.
• You think in systems: performance, edge cases, instrumentation, maintainability.
• You use AI tools daily to accelerate your work — not as a crutch, but as leverage.

Extra pluses

• Experience with Figma or similar design tools for rapid prototyping.
• You care about accessibility and inclusive UX.
• You’ve built interactions and motion that feel good, not just functional.
• You read fiction, build worlds, or create things for fun.