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
Direct message the job poster from Thyme
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 TechnologyIndustries
Software Development and Technology, Information and Media
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