Staff Software Engineer, Product

Responsibilities

• Own product areas end-to-end — from identifying opportunities that aren't on anyone's roadmap, to building conviction, shipping, and driving to measurable outcomes
• Design complete systems: data model, API design, frontend architecture (full-stack) or backend services and infrastructure (backend), and deployment strategy
• Make high-stakes technical decisions under uncertainty — build-vs-buy, monolith-vs-service, when to prototype and when to harden — and be accountable for the outcomes
• Work with ML researchers to turn research services into reliable, product-consumable systems
• Ship and iterate — measure, course-correct, and drive to sustained impact
• Raise the technical and product quality bar on the team — introduce practices others adopt, unblock teammates, and create clarity out of ambiguity
• Navigate cross-functional collaboration with product, design, research, and leadership to align on what matters

Requirements

• 8+ years of experience in software engineering, with a focus on product development
• Deep experience building web applications spanning data model, API, frontend architecture, and deployment
• Track record of repeated, attributable impact — multiple projects across different roles or companies where you can quantify outcomes (revenue, engagement, efficiency)
• Personal technical depth: dealt with real performance issues: slow queries, N+1 problems, caching, transaction isolation
• Product judgment and autonomous ownership — identified opportunities, validated them with evidence, built buy-in, shipped
• Clear, persuasive communication — build buy-in across engineering, product, and leadership
• Genuine conviction about AI evaluation and Arena's mission

Nice-to-Haves

• Production experience with AI/LLM systems — inference pipelines, evaluation workflows, model integration, or AI-powered product features
• Familiarity with our stack: NextJS, React, TypeScript, Tailwind, ShadCN, HonoJS, Postgres, Vitest
• Experience with Supabase or Vercel's AI SDK
• You've raised the bar on a team with measurable before/after — introduced practices, tools, or standards that others adopted

Tech Stack

• NextJS
• React + TypeScript
• Tailwind + ShadCN
• HonoJS
• Postgres
• Vitest