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Thyme

Senior Software Engineer

Thyme, San Francisco

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This range is provided by Thyme. Your actual pay will be based on your skills and experience — talk with your recruiter to learn more.

Base pay range

$150,000.00/yr - $200,000.00/yr

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Founding Front End Engineer | Stealth AI Creator Startup

About the Company

A breakout consumer AI startup is looking for a Founding Front End Engineer to join at a pivotal moment — just after hitting $1M ARR in under 4 months and on track to 10x that within the year.

They’re building AI tools that supercharge individual creators — helping them produce standout social content at scale.

The product sits at the intersection of AI, video, and real-time collaboration . Early traction has been explosive, and they’re backed by top-tier angels with ongoing conversations with tier-1 VCs.

This is an opportunity to own the technical vision , assist in building out the team, and help define a product that could touch millions!

What You’ll Do

  • Take ownership of foundational frontend architecture as a founding engineer , making decisions that shape the company’s core product and design system
  • Design and implement complex animation systems using finite state machines
  • Manage intricate UI state transitions across multi-step AI-driven workflows
  • Build scalable, performant UIs that handle real-time AI streaming, complex data, and progressive loading states
  • Maintain high standards for accessibility, quality, and resilience while scaling to thousands of users

Your Skills – Must-Have

  • 6+ years of production experience building complex, user-facing applications
  • State management mastery : expert with FSMs (e.g., XState, Zustand ) and complex UI transitions
  • Animation architecture : deep understanding of FLIP technique , hardware acceleration, and custom choreography
  • TypeScript expertise : advanced patterns, generics, conditional types, type-safe API design
  • Performance engineering : Core Web Vitals, memory profiling, virtual scrolling , render performance tuning
  • Accessibility at scale : WCAG 2.1 AA, screen readers , keyboard navigation for complex flows
  • Testing excellence : strong experience with visual regression, accessibility, and performance testing

Your Skills – Nice-to-Have

  • Experience in GPU-based rendering or familiarity with infra considerations for AI-driven UIs
  • Building scalable component libraries, design systems , and compound components
  • Advanced animation via Framer Motion , React Spring, or custom engines
  • Complex data visualization: D3.js, Canvas/WebGL
  • Advanced build tooling: Webpack, Vite, code splitting strategies
  • Interfaces for ML/AI systems , especially handling non-deterministic or streaming UX
  • Familiarity with AI/ML concepts and how to surface them in an intuitive UI

The Stack

  • Frontend : TypeScript, React, Next.js, Tailwind CSS, Framer Motion, XState
  • Testing : Jest, Testing Library, Playwright, Chromatic
  • AI Integration : Streaming APIs, WebSocket-based real-time collaboration
  • Infrastructure : Docker, CDN optimization, edge computing , GPU-accelerated rendering concepts
  • A complex animation system you’ve architected from scratch
  • A performance optimization that improved Core Web Vitals by 20%+
  • Examples of accessible, interactive, complex UIs you’ve built
  • (Optional) Open source contributions or technical writing that demonstrates expertise

Technical Challenges You Should Thrive On

  • Building a real-time collaborative interface with 60fps animations
  • Implementing robust state machines for multi-step AI workflows
  • Optimizing render performance for data-heavy dashboards
  • Architecting reusable component libraries for multi-product scaling

Why This Role:

  • Join a rocket ship just before liftoff — massive trajectory already underway
  • Competitive salary + meaningful equity
  • Direct impact on product, culture, and trajectory
  • Work with a highly capable, fast-moving team that actually ships

Seniority level

  • Seniority level

    Mid-Senior level

Employment type

  • Employment type

    Full-time

Job function

  • Job function

    Information Technology
  • Industries

    Software Development and Technology, Information and Media

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