Front End Product Engineer - Obvious

About Obvious

We’re building an AI‑native workspace—an operating system for work that puts co‑intelligence at the center. Start with data or an idea, describe your goal, and Obvious goes to work: running analysis, searching the web, writing documents, generating tables, designing presentations, visualizing data, building dashboards, and more.

As Steve Jobs imagined the personal computer as a bicycle for the mind, Obvious imagines AI as a garden for the mind. Less mechanical acceleration. More organic cultivation.

What if, instead of just vibe coding, you could vibe‑work? What if getting from idea to done wasn’t so opaque, stubborn, and high‑latency?

What if there was a way to consistently deliver work that feels like it came from the best version of you on your best day?

That’s Obvious.

This role reports to: Jon Bell, VP of Product & Engineering

Why we're hiring for this role

While we've built real-time collaborative editing, virtualized data grids, rich document rendering, and agent-aware UI patterns, we're just scratching the surface of what's possible when humans and AI work together on a shared canvas.

We need frontend engineers who can bridge the gap between powerful AI capabilities and production-ready interfaces that feel effortless, transparent, and trustworthy - even when the underlying system is non-deterministic.

We’re focused on building resilient, performant UI that handles the unique challenges of working with AI at scale: streaming responses, progressive disclosure, optimistic updates, graceful degradation, real-time presence across agents and humans, and interfaces that make complexity feel simple.

We are small and talent-dense. Among our founding team, we have world-class builders, former founders, and leaders from companies like Netflix, Google, Uber, Meta, Instacart, Shopify, Apple, and Twitter. If you're excited to define how people and AI work together at the interface layer, and build UI that sets the standard, join us.

In this role you will:

• Drive full-stack feature development from conception to deployment, taking ownership of key product initiatives

• Ship a lot of product and talk directly to users

• Collaborate on design and implementation of user-facing features that improve user experience

• Build robust, scalable, and performant web applications using modern frontend technologies

• Implement complex React components: virtualized tables/lists, drag‑and‑drop editors, real‑time collaborative cursors/selections, rich text/data co‑authoring, and more.

• Evolve our real‑time collaborative editing model for experiences with low‑latency, conflict‑aware UX.

• Profile and improve app performance end‑to‑end: bundle strategy, render paths, memoization, concurrent features, scheduling, and network usage.

• Shape new UI patterns for autonomous agents in work‑centric interfaces: intent visualization, agent transparency, corrective control, and multi‑agent collaboration.

• Establish state‑of‑the‑art cross‑browser and cross‑device testing so our experiences “just work” every time.

• Make clear trade‑offs balancing user experience, delivery speed, and business impact—and influence these decisions across the org.

You will thrive in this role if you have:

• Significant experience shipping production web apps with meaningful contributions to design, architecture, and performance.

• Deep expertise in frontend technologies: TypeScript, JavaScript, React, and CSS (modern layout, animations, variables, architecture).

• Hands‑on experience with complex UI problems: virtualization, drag‑and‑drop, real‑time collaboration, rich editors, canvas/WebGL, or data‑dense UIs.

• Proven ability to optimize at the system level: asset pipelines, code‑splitting, hydration strategies, caching, and profiling.

• End‑to‑end product development: ideation, product spec, prototyping, design partnership, implementation, and iteration.

• Track record of raising the bar for technical standards, performance, reliability, and operational excellence.

• High autonomy and accountability; can do large amounts of meaningful work quickly with little oversight.

What great looks like

• Taste: You sweat the details—type, motion, density, affordances, empty states—and you know when to cut scope to protect quality.

• Velocity: You operate at an unreasonable pace without leaving a mess. You default to simple designs that scale.

• Judgment: You pick the right tools, patterns, and abstractions—and resist the wrong ones.

• Systems thinking: You design components and data flows that compose; you remove complexity, not just add features.

• Ownership: You lead projects from fuzzy idea → prototype → production → polish → impact.

• Experience: You have a proven record of exceptional achievements and impact

• Adaptability: You have a willingness to work hard, move fast and grow quickly in a rapidly changing environment

• Camaraderie: You have a humble attitude, an eagerness to help your colleagues, and a desire to do whatever it takes to make the team succeed

• Smithing: Build tools to accelerate your own (and your teammates') workflows, but only when off-the-shelf solutions won't do.

This role may not be a fit if:

• You prefer working exclusively on backend systems without user interaction

• You're uncomfortable with the pace and changing priorities of a startup environment

• You require highly structured requirements and aren't comfortable with ambiguity

#LI-Remote

What you'll get at Obvious

• Competitive compensation—optimized for you and your future.

• Meaningful equity—you’ll own a real piece of something that could be huge.

• Founding team influence—your voice will shape direction.

• Creative freedom—evolve and steer both current and future product identity.

• Platform to shine—use Obvious’s reach to amplify your personal brand and design voice.

• Room to grow—as we scale, opportunities are limitless.

• In-person hackathons—we’re semi‑distributed and regularly meet in person to lock in and build together.

• Excellent benefits—fully covered health, vision, and dental, 401k match, parental leave, home office stipend, and more.

• Work comfortably—choose between a $10,000 home office makeover stipend or paid co-working spaces.