Product Engineer / Product Builder - Backend or Full-stack

AI is making software execution faster and more accessible. What remains rare is judgment — knowing what to build, why it matters, which trade-offs to make, and what it takes to turn an idea into real customer and business impact.

Product Engineers own technical solutions end-to-end: from understanding the problem and contributing to technical discovery, through implementation and testing, to release, production and continuous improvement.

Two technical backgrounds are considered:

Backend-led: Your strongest area is PHP, application architecture, business logic, APIs, data and distributed systems. You take responsibility for backend solutions and step into other parts of the product when established patterns, collaboration and AI make it practical.

Full-stack: You work across frontend and backend, usually with your strongest edge in TypeScript, Vue.js, user journeys and UX. PHP and Laravel are a regular part of the scope of work.

You do not need identical depth across every part of the stack. Strong engineering foundations in a primary area, enough range to deliver meaningful outcomes, and the judgment to recognise when to work independently, collaborate, or seek specialist depth are expected.

The Product Manager owns product direction and the what and why. You own the technical how — deciding the technical approach and remaining responsible for the quality of what reaches production.

Scope of cooperation

• End-to-end delivery: depending on your background, lead backend services or ship complete user-facing features across frontend and backend.
• Technical discovery: validate feasibility, identify constraints and shape the technical approach before the scope is locked.
• Technical decisions: select solutions that balance customer value, delivery speed, maintainability and operational risk.
• Production quality: test, release, monitor and stay close to the solution during rollout and hypercare.
• AI-augmented development: Claude Code is a daily driver; MCP servers, custom agents, skills and internal tooling are part of the workflow.
• Cross-functional collaboration with Product Managers, QA and other engineers: contribute context and trade-offs instead of waiting for a fully specified ticket.
• Continuous improvement: notice recurring problems and leave products, systems and engineering practices better than you found them.

Requirements

You will thrive in this cooperation if:

• You have shipped software used by real customers and stayed close enough to know what worked, what broke and what needed to change.
• You want to understand the customer and business problem before deciding how to solve it.
• Owning a problem end-to-end feels more natural than executing a fully specified ticket.
• You can explain a technical trade-off to a Product Manager and a business rationale to an experienced engineer.
• You have opinions about quality beyond passing code review or handing work over to QA.
• AI tools feel like a natural extension of how you think and work.
• You are willing to work outside your primary technical area when it helps deliver a better outcome.
• You ask “is this worth building?” and “what outcome are we trying to create?” before implementation.

Backend-led Product Engineer

Your technical home is the backend. Expected:

• Strong commercial experience with PHP and Laravel or Symfony.
• Experience designing backend systems, not only implementing predefined endpoints.
• Strong understanding of business logic, data modelling, REST APIs and integrations.
• Experience with microservices, event-driven systems or other distributed architectures.
• Practical knowledge of relational and non-relational databases, caching and message queues.
• Familiarity with Docker, CI/CD and production infrastructure.
• Openness to working with JavaScript or TypeScript and contributing outside the backend when required.

Frontend-specialist depth is not required, but responsibility for the entire product outcome is expected rather than treating the API boundary as the end of responsibility.

Full-stack Product Engineer

You deliver across the stack, with particular strength in frontend engineering and user experience. Expected:

• Strong commercial experience with TypeScript, JavaScript and Vue.js.
• Experience with component architecture, state management, performance and maintainable frontend systems.
• Practical knowledge of Tailwind and Pinia, or transferable experience from comparable tools.
• Commercial experience with PHP and Laravel.
• Confidence working with APIs, business logic, databases, caching and backend integrations.
• UX sensibility: notice interaction problems, accessibility issues and inconsistencies before customers report them.
• Ability to deliver frontend and backend changes as part of the same feature.

This is not a frontend-only cooperation. PHP and Laravel are a regular part of the scope.

Shared technical environment

Depending on the product and area of focus, you will work with:

PHP · Laravel · Symfony · TypeScript · JavaScript · Vue.js · Tailwind · Pinia · REST APIs · MySQL / MariaDB · MongoDB · Redis · RabbitMQ · Microservices · CQRS · Event Sourcing · Docker · Kubernetes · GitLab CI/CD · Claude Code · MCP servers · AI agents

Equal experience with every listed technology is not expected.

AI-native engineering

Hands-on experience with Claude Code, Cursor or an equivalent AI coding environment is important. AI should be used for more than autocomplete, including technical discovery, implementation across unfamiliar parts of the stack, test generation, debugging, codebase exploration, specification-driven development and building repeatable engineering workflows.

Experience creating MCP servers, agents, skills or internal AI tooling is a strong advantage.

Bonus points

• Built and shipped a side project for yourself or real users.
• Use AI tools independently and actively develop your own workflows.
• Built an MCP server, agent or another tool that solved a real problem.
• Worked with Event Sourcing or CQRS in a production system.
• Contributed to a design system or component library.
• Designed solutions involving caching, queues, service boundaries or complex integrations.
• Can show a product or feature owned from the initial problem through to production outcomes.

Probably not for you if

• You are most comfortable when every decision and implementation detail has already been specified.
• You want a strictly backend-only or frontend-only scope and consider the rest of the product someone else’s responsibility.
• Your definition of “done” ends when the code is merged.
• You consider testing and production quality primarily the QA team’s responsibility.
• Your hands-on AI experience is limited to autocomplete and occasional summaries.
• You prefer receiving tasks over understanding and owning the problem behind them.

Communication

You communicate comfortably in Polish and English and can work closely with Product Managers, QA engineers, software engineers and business stakeholders.

Benefits

• Contract terms: B2B cooperation.
• Monthly compensation up to 30,000 PLN net, depending on experience and agreed scope of services.
• Remote-first collaboration model.
• International technology and product projects.
• Flexible project collaboration setup.
• Planned service breaks aligned with contract terms.
• Opportunity to collaborate with experienced product and technology teams.
• Opportunity to access selected knowledge-sharing initiatives.

Recruitment process

• Discovery call (up to 45 minutes): background, expectations and mutual fit.
• Business & Mindset Fit interview with the Product Manager and Team Leader (up to 60 minutes): ownership, business judgment, problem-solving and general mindset.
• Technical Deep Dive with the Team Leader and a Developer (up to 60 minutes): concrete technical questions, potentially including code review or a system design exercise. The focus is on judgment and reasoning, not keyword recall.
• Decision: in case of a tie between candidates, this stage acts as a tiebreaker.