Senior AI Product Engineer for Business Automation Systems

We are looking for a senior AI-native product engineer / technical lead to help turn messy business operations into reliable software systems. About the work Hire Brian helps owner-led businesses move beyond spreadsheets, manual follow-up, disconnected tools, and "the owner just remembers how it works." We build practical internal tools, workflow systems, dashboards, integrations, AI-assisted processes, and client-specific apps. This is not an AI demo or chatbot-only project. The work is software, operations, and business judgment first. AI should make the system faster, clearer, safer, or more useful. The role You will work directly with Brian, who owns strategy, discovery, client relationships, workshops, sales, and final decisions. Your job is to turn that strategy into working software. This starts as a contractor role. If the fit is strong, the intent is to build a long-term relationship, with a mutual option to discuss a deeper or full-time role after 12 months. Expected hours and rate - 20-30 hours/week preferred - 15 hours/week minimum only for an exceptional candidate - Target rate: $55-$85 USD/hour - Remote, LATAM preferred - Must have reliable overlap with US Central Time Examples of work you may own - Internal apps that replace spreadsheet-driven workflows - AI-assisted systems for intake, reporting, document handling, follow-up, routing, approvals, and status visibility - Sales, operations, or paid-ads dashboards using real business metrics - Company wiki / operating portals with files, training content, worksheets, permissions, and admin visibility - Practice/product systems with progress tracking, credits, roles, and parent/customer visibility - MES-style operational software for manufacturing or field-service businesses - API integrations, webhooks, OAuth, file storage, auth, databases, deployment, logging, and fallback behavior Required experience - 5+ years of production software engineering experience - Strong full-stack product engineering judgment - Strong TypeScript/JavaScript and modern web app experience - Backend experience, preferably Python - Experience with databases, APIs, auth, deployment, debugging, and production maintenance - Real experience shipping internal tools, SaaS features, workflow systems, dashboards, or line-of-business apps - Practical AI/LLM development experience beyond prompt demos - Comfortable using AI coding tools while still applying senior engineering judgment - Clear English communication - Able to work from incomplete requirements and explain tradeoffs in plain English Strong signals - You have built software used by non-technical operators - You have inherited messy systems and made them safer - You know when automation should stop and ask a human - You can design the workflow, data model, UX, and implementation path - You can tell when AI-generated code is wrong - You care about reliability: tests, logs, permissions, rollback, docs, and handoff Not a fit - You mostly build AI demos, chatbots, or prompt experiments - You need perfect specs before making progress - You blindly trust AI-generated code - You rewrite systems before understanding them - You avoid tests, logging, documentation, or production-readiness work - You are casual with customer data, credentials, or private repos - You only want tickets, not product ownership How to apply Please include the following in your proposal: 1. Location, time zone, hourly rate, and weekly availability 2. Central Time overlap you can reliably maintain 3. GitHub, portfolio, technical writing, product demo, Loom walkthrough, or shipped product links 4. Two real software systems you built or substantially improved, including your exact contribution 5. One AI-assisted workflow, automation, agentic system, or LLM-backed feature you built, and what made it production-ready 6. One messy business process you turned into software 7. One example of when an AI workflow must stop for human approval Private client work is fine to summarize or sanitize. A redacted screenshot, architecture note, walkthrough, or sanitized write-up is acceptable. Paid trial The next step for finalists will be a paid 5-hour trial at your proposed hourly rate using synthetic data only. No production credentials, private client data, or client-owned repositories will be shared for the trial. Default trial direction: build or improve a small company wiki / operating portal using synthetic material. The portal should organize company knowledge, training/course content, files, worksheets, owners, and next actions in a way a real business could maintain.