The Role That Didn't Used to Exist
A few years ago, building a product meant a team: backend engineer, frontend engineer, designer, product manager. Each person owned a slice. Coordination was the job.
That's ending.
AI has collapsed the distance between idea and implementation. The best builders today design the interface, write the backend, integrate the AI, and ship it — not because they're doing five jobs, but because the walls between those jobs are disappearing. One person with product instinct and technical depth can now do what used to take a team of five.
The companies that have truly gone AI-first in how they build products are already restructuring around this. Quietly. No blog posts — just fewer handoffs, smaller teams, and individual builders shipping what used to require a squad.
We're hiring those people. We call the role Product Builder (Member of Technical Staff), but what it really means is: you build products end-to-end and you're responsible for the outcome.
About ChangelogLabs
We partner with founders and companies to build AI-native products & organizations — from zero to commercially ready, fast. Our team ships real products to real users, not prototypes that demo well.
Small team. High leverage. High standards.
What You'll Actually Do
The domains vary — the constants don't:
- Figure out what to build, then build it. You'll get a problem, not a spec. You decide the approach — the data model, the UI, the AI architecture, the infrastructure. Then you ship it.
- Own the full surface. Monday you're designing a user flow. Tuesday you're writing an API. Wednesday you're tuning a prompt chain. Thursday you're debugging a deployment. This isn't context-switching — it's the job.
- Ship to real users. Everything you build gets used. You'll hear directly what works and what doesn't. No shelf-ware.
- Build with AI at the core. LLMs, embeddings, intelligent systems — not bolted on as features, built in as architecture. You'll have premium access to frontier models with generous limits.
A Typical Week
You're working on a product for a fintech founder. Last week you scoped the core user journey with them. This week:
- You design the key screens — layout, interaction model, information hierarchy. Not pixel-perfect mockups, but clear enough to build from.
- You build the backend: data model, API layer, an LLM pipeline that extracts and structures financial data from messy inputs.
- You wire up the frontend. The user can upload documents, see structured output, and take action on it.
- Friday: it's deployed. The founder's team is using it. You get feedback over the weekend. Monday you iterate.
That's one week. Next month it might be a healthcare product, or a developer tool, or something nobody's built before.
Who This Is For
We don't filter on years of experience. We've seen people with 2 years of experience out-build people with 10. What matters:
You build whole products, not components. You don't think of yourself as "backend" or "frontend." You think about what the user needs and you build the path there — database to API to interface. If you've only ever worked on one layer of the stack, this probably isn't the right fit yet.
You have product sense. You can look at a problem space and decide what to build — not just how to build what someone told you to. You've shipped things users actually wanted, not just what was specified.
You've built with AI. You've used LLMs in real projects — not just tutorials. You understand how to make AI systems reliable, not just impressive in demos. Side projects count. Work projects count. What matters is you've done it.
You move fast and iterate. You default to shipping over planning. You'd rather put something in front of users today and learn than spend a week making it perfect in isolation.
Ambiguity doesn't slow you down. Requirements will be incomplete. Priorities will shift. You find this energizing, not stressful.
Strong Signals
- You've built and shipped something people use (link us to it)
- You've worked at an early-stage company or on a scrappy team
- You can explain complex technical concepts to non-technical people
- You have strong opinions about how products should work
Tech We Use
Python, Node, React, TypeScript, LLM APIs, vector databases, AWS/Vercel. Different stack? Good builders adapt — we care about what you can build, not what you've used.
What We Offer
Ownership. You own product areas, not tickets. Your decisions shape what ships.
Premium AI tooling. Frontier models with generous limits. Build with the best available.
Variety. Different products, different domains, new problems. Growth comes from range.
No bureaucracy. Small team. Direct communication. Ship when ready.
Compensation. Fair & competitive for Cairo + equity participation in what you build.
Flexibility. Remote-friendly. Output over attendance.
Who This Isn't For
- Engineers who want to specialize in one part of the stack
- People who need detailed specs before they can start
- Anyone optimizing for titles over impact
- People who want predictable, well-defined work
How to Apply
No cover letter. Show us work.
Send:
- GitHub (or equivalent) — what you've built
- Something live — link to a product or feature you shipped that people use (even if that person is you)
- A hard problem you solved — brief write-up of how you thought through it
Process
- Review (1-2 days)
- Technical conversation (1 hour) — what you've built, how you think
- Deep-dive pairing session (4 hours) — real problem, real code
- Final conversation (45 minutes) — fit, expectations, questions
- Offer (1-2 days)
No leetcode. No whiteboard tricks. We evaluate builders by watching them build.
If you build things that ship, let's talk.