Product Engineer | Interaction Layer

Full-Stack Product Engineer (Interaction Layer)
Seattle, WA (in-person collaboration) About Aarden

Aarden is building an interactive data experience on top of rich geospatial land and parcel data. We combine modern web tech, geospatial tooling, and AI to help people explore land value, understand what’s possible for a given parcel, and make better decisions faster. We’re a small, high-trust team that ships quickly and learns directly from our customers.

We’re looking for an engineer with 2-4+ years experience to lead development of the interaction layer of our app: the places where users click, drag, filter, search, and chat with the system, and the backend and APIs that power those flows. You’ll work across our Next.js frontend and Node/Express backend, building polished UI plus the endpoints, data models, and glue code that make the whole experience feel fast and intuitive.

• Design and build product features across our map, tables, filters, and AI/assistant experiences in Next.js (Type Script + React)
• Implement and evolve backend routes and APIs in Node/Express that back those interactions, working within a shared type system and our existing services
• Take responsibility for interaction details with team input: performance, loading states, error handling, and “feel” of complex flows like uploads, search, and multi‑step filters
• Collaborate with design, data science, and product to scope features, trade off complexity vs. value, and ship iterative improvements quickly
• Help uplevel our interaction patterns: better abstractions, cleaner boundaries between front end / back end / shared types, and a smoother developer experience

• Are based in the Seattle area and energized by in‑person collaboration a few days a week (whiteboarding, pairing, and quick feedback loops with the team)
• Have built something cool, robust and user‑friendly in the geospatial space
• Have experience leveraging agentic coding workflows to augment and up‑level your output
• Have 2-4+ years of experience building production web applications with Type Script, React, and a Node‑based backend
• Have shipped meaningful product surface area end‑to‑end (UI + API + data model) and enjoy evolving and delivering user‑facing outcomes, not just tickets
• Care about interaction details and performance: loading states, empty states, optimistic updates, query performance
• Bonus points if you’ve explored interesting problems outside of work (side projects, open source contributions, etc.)

• Frontend:
  Type Script, Next.js (App Router), React, React Query, Tailwind, Map Libre, shadcn/ui.
• Backend:
  Node.js/Express, Type Script, Postgres/PostGIS, DuckDB, pgvector, BAML‑based LLM agents.
• Infra: AWS, PMTiles, py Spark/Wherobots, Datadog

Aarden is a high‑trust, collaborative team building something ambitious. We work hard and support each other deeply—you'll tackle challenging problems with teammates who have your back.

What this looks like day‑to‑day:

• You'll lead meaningful projects end‑to‑end, with input and support from the team throughout
• In‑person collaboration 2+ days/week for pairing, whiteboarding, and problem‑solving together (Capitol Hill office)
• We invest in your growth: dedicated AI tooling budget, focused mentorship, and space to develop deep expertise
• High expectations paired with high support—we care about sustainable output, not hero culture

This role will stretch you. You'll ship features that matter, work through ambiguous problems with the team, and build something users love. If that sounds energizing (not exhausting), let's talk. Fill out the short questionnaire below, and we'll be in touch if it's a good fit!

We're hiring for an early 2026 start and will be reviewing applications through the holidays and into the new year.