Founding Software Engineer — Product

Roark is a company that focuses on product engineering, and they are seeking a Founding Software Engineer to own the customer-facing surfaces of their platform. The role involves designing and building product features, engaging with customers, and ensuring high-quality standards in the development process.

Responsibilities:

• Design and build product surfaces end-to-end: Next.js/React frontend, GraphQL API, Postgres data model — schema to pixel
• Turn messy real-world workflows (test suites, issue triage, run reviews) into interfaces that feel obvious in hindsight
• Work directly with design on a system that takes craft seriously — and push back when something reads wrong
• Sit in on customer calls, watch people use your features, and ship the fix the same week
• Raise the bar on quality: tests where they earn their keep, instrumentation everywhere, no silent failures

Requirements:

• 4+ years building production web applications, with deep TypeScript and React experience
• Comfort owning a feature across the whole stack — API design, data modelling, and UI polish
• A portfolio (or war stories) showing product taste: you notice spacing, latency and empty states
• Bias to ship: you would rather put a small version in front of a user this week than a big one next month
• Clear written communication — we are remote and we write things down
• Experience with GraphQL (Pothos/Yoga), Drizzle, or event-driven backends
• You have built developer-facing tools, dashboards or observability products before