Associate Product Engineer

Learn the product by shipping it

You will work alongside the founder — moving tickets with AI coding tools, sitting in on customer calls, watching what people actually use, and making the product clearer week by week. The autonomy grows as you do.
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Remote — United States
Full-time
Product
$60,000 – $80,000

About the role

episki is an Autonomous GRC platform. Compliance teams use it to run SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA and a dozen other frameworks without the spreadsheet sprawl and the per-framework upcharges the rest of the category runs on.

The product is good. The gap between what customers need and what's in front of them is still bigger than it should be — and closing that gap, a little every week, is the job.

Right now there is one person between a customer mentioning a problem and that problem getting fixed, and that person is the founder. This role exists to change that. You'd be the one keeping the queue moving: picking up scoped work and building it with AI tools, sitting in on the calls where the problems get mentioned, and watching the usage data for the confusion nobody bothered to report.

The craft half matters as much as the shipping half. GRC software has a reputation for being punishing to use, and most of the category has earned it. Consistency is what separates a product that feels like one product from a pile of features that each shipped in a different month. Holding that line starts as something we do together and becomes something you own.

You will be early, and you will be supported. That means real leverage and real ambiguity, with someone in the room while you learn to handle both. If you are early in your career and that sounds like the fastest way to get good, we should talk.

What you'll actually do

Four things, every week: tickets, customers, usage, and craft. You will do all four, with backup.
  • Keep the ticket queue moving — pick up scoped work, build it with AI coding tools, and put it up for review. Nothing ships without a second pair of eyes, especially early.
  • Sit in on customer calls and onboarding sessions. Ask questions, take notes, and write up what you heard while it is still fresh.
  • Watch how the product actually gets used — what people open, where they stall, what they never find. Come back with what the numbers say rather than what we assume.
  • Flag what is confusing before a customer has to: the empty state with no next step, the error message that explains nothing, the two buttons in one flow that disagree.
  • Turn recurring friction into a small product change instead of another support reply.
  • Close the loop: go back to the customer who raised it and show them what changed.

What we're looking for

This is an early-career role. We are hiring for taste, clarity and momentum, not for years on a resume.
  • A real eye for UI and UX — you notice when two buttons in the same flow disagree, and it bothers you enough to say so.
  • Enough technical fluency to read code, follow a data model, and make a scoped change with AI tools. You do not need to have shipped production software before.
  • Comfortable with AI coding tools as a daily driver, and honest about where they get things wrong.
  • Writing that is plain and precise. Most of this job is written: tickets, notes, changelogs, customer replies.
  • Curiosity about how software gets used. You would rather look at the usage data than guess.
  • Comfort saying "I do not follow yet" in front of a customer or the founder. Asking beats guessing, every time.

Helpful, not required

None of these are filters. They are the things that would shorten your ramp.
  • Any exposure to GRC — SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA — from any angle: an internship, an audit you got pulled into, a vendor questionnaire you had to fill out.
  • Vue or Nuxt, or the willingness to be productive in them inside a few weeks.
  • Something you shipped and can walk us through — including what you cut and why.
  • Any customer-facing experience at all — support, success, or a service job where people were annoyed and you were the one in front of them.

What this role is not

Being straight about this up front saves us both a month.
  • Not a senior engineering role. You will not be handed the architecture, and you will not be expected to arrive knowing it.
  • Not a solo role. The founder is in the codebase and on the calls with you every week, for a long while.
  • Not a role with day-one autonomy — it grows, but the first few months are paired, reviewed, and deliberately close.
  • Not a design role. You will hold the bar on clarity, but you are not producing comps in Figma all week.
  • Not a support role. The goal is to make the ticket unnecessary next time, not to close it faster.
Process

How we hire for this role

Every step, in order, with how long it takes. No surprise rounds.
  1. 1
    Apply15 minutes

    The form below. A few sentences on why this role and a link to something you've built or shipped beats a cover letter every time.

  2. 2
    Interview30 minutes

    A conversation with Justin — what you're looking for, what this actually is, and whether it's worth continuing. No panel, no screening gauntlet.

  3. 3
    Working session~8 hours over a week

    You scope and ship a small, real feature in episki. We agree on the scope together, then you build it on your own schedule — roughly eight hours across a week, paid a flat $800.

  4. 4
    Offer2 days

    Decision within two business days of the working session, either way. You'll hear back with a reason.

Compensation and benefits

$60,000 – $80,000

The band is published because you should not have to spend two calls finding it out. We revisit it at six months — if you have outgrown the role as written, the number should say so.
Remote, async by default
Work where you work best. A handful of scheduled calls a week, and customer sessions that land in business hours.
A scope that grows
You start paired and reviewed. As the work proves out, more of it becomes yours outright — and equity comes with the role.
Health coverage
Medical, dental, and vision for you and your dependents.
Equipment you choose
Your machine, your setup, and the AI tooling budget to go with it.
Time off that's real
Flexible PTO with a floor, not a ceiling — the expectation is that you take it.
A short path to shipped
No committee between you and production. You'll see your work in front of customers the week you build it.

Think this is you?

Tell us what you'd fix first. That's genuinely the most useful thing you can send.

Applying for Associate Product Engineer. No account, no resume parser, no 40-field form.

Optional

LinkedIn, GitHub, portfolio, something you shipped — whatever shows the work.

Poke around episki.com or the product. Tell us the first thing you would change and why. This matters more to us than a resume.

Your application goes to the founder directly. We do not share it, sell it, or add you to a mailing list.