Product Engineer

About the role

You will own the complete lifecycle of features from initial discovery through production deployment at Alma, an AI-native law firm focused on immigration law. You will work directly with the founding team and early customers to build a world-class AI-powered product that simplifies complex immigration processes. You will serve both external customers navigating high-stakes immigration journeys and our internal legal team who rely on your tools daily. Your mission is to remove friction from their workflows by shipping features that are fast, transparent, and high-touch. You will architect backend systems, design database schemas, and build the frontend components that users interact with. You will treat every bug as an opportunity to improve the customer experience and every rough edge as a chance to move fast. You will use modern AI coding tools to amplify your impact and act as a force multiplier for the entire product team.

Key facts

What you'll do

• Partner with the founding team and early customers to discover problems and define the scope of new features.
• Own features end-to-end, architecting backend services, defining database schemas, and implementing frontend user interactions.
• Translate complex immigration workflows into intuitive user experiences that serve both external clients and internal attorneys.
• Build and maintain robust APIs that enable seamless communication between frontend, backend, and AI services.
• Leverage AI-native development workflows using tools like Claude Code, Cursor, and MCP servers to accelerate delivery.
• Write high-quality code with strong testing practices to ensure reliability as the platform scales toward 100x growth.
• Collaborate closely with the legal team to observe workflows and identify opportunities for automation and simplification.
• Diagnose issues in production systems and implement fixes that improve performance, security, and user satisfaction.
• Refactor legacy code and improve codebases that have rough edges without waiting for someone else to own it.
• Ship features quickly by embracing modern tooling that reduces boilerplate and manual frontend work.
• Act as a product partner rather than a ticket implementer by asking questions and proposing thoughtful solutions.
• Maintain a high standard for debugging, testing, and deployment to ensure every release meets our quality bar.
• Use your instincts to identify inefficiencies and improve the developer experience for everyone on the team.
• Contribute to a culture where engineers are responsible for outcomes, not just outputs.

Requirements

• You are deeply customer-obsessed and understand that customers include both external users and internal legal teams.
• You have a strong "can-do" attitude and move fast without sacrificing quality or clarity.
• You see problems as work to do and feel compelled to fix messy code or missing tests yourself.
• You are comfortable owning features from database schema to the React component the user clicks on.
• You are an AI-native engineer who lives inside modern coding harnesses like Claude Code, Cursor, or Codex.
• You use MCP servers and AI agents to extend your workflow and boost your productivity.
• You prefer to treat agents as core collaborators in how you ship features and deliver value.
• You have the ability to learn new technologies quickly and apply them to real-world legal workflows.
• You are a strong backend engineer who is willing to build frontend components using modern tools.
• You thrive in an environment where processes are still being invented and not every corner is polished.
• You are okay with rough edges in the codebase as a feature of being early rather than a reason to complain.
• You are willing to sit with the legal team, watch them work, and obsess over making their lives easier.
• You have experience shipping products that handle sensitive data with transparency and high-touch support.

Nice to have

• Experience working in regulated industries such as legal or financial services.
• Background in immigration law or familiarity with visa and citizenship processes.
• Contributions to open-source AI or tooling projects that demonstrate engineering rigor.
• Experience building platforms that scale to support large legal teams and high transaction volumes.
• Familiarity with legal technology products and document automation workflows.

Practical notes

This is a full-time role based in Palo Alto. The engagement is full_time. There are no specific visa, travel, or deadline details provided in the source material.