no evidence of high agency
Lack of demonstrated high-agency. While there is solid open source activity, there isn't a standout personal project or independent initiative that showcases ownership or drive.
Profile leans more towards research than hands-on product building; looking for someone with a stronger track record of building and shipping products.
LinkedIn profile not active or insufficient online presence.
Looking for more founding experience and a stronger obsessive builder archetype.
Did not perform strongly on technical assessment. Additionally, seeking candidates with stronger communication skills and a more entrepreneurial, high-ownership builder mindset.
Limited entrepreneurial experience; does not demonstrate the drive of someone who builds projects independently outside of their primary job.
Lacks demonstrated founder-level initiative and does not show evidence of building projects outside of formal employment.
Limited entrepreneurial experience; does not demonstrate the drive of someone who builds projects independently outside of their main job.
Looking for more founding experience and a stronger obsessive builder archetype.
Prioritizing candidates with founding experience and stronger communication skills. Did not demonstrate the obsessive builder mindset we're seeking.
Axel is hiring its second product engineer. Someone who owns a class of problems that sit between vibe-coding and infrastructure-staff-engineer work — Stephen can hand him a problem that requires real correctness and pace, and this person will hunt it down until it's done at high quality, leveraging AI tools without being plinked through them.
Stephen vibe-codes a UI to ~85%, then hands it off — UI design polish goes to the design lead, and the front-end execution to the team's front-end engineer. This role fills out that layer: closing the last 20% on product engineering work, the kind of problem that's above what Claude can do alone but below the staff-engineer work of getting Terraform exactly right or making sure the payments ledger ties out. With Axel doubling booking volume month over month, Stephen needs more people who can take this kind of problem off his plate without becoming a pain. The hire reports to Stephen directly; the engineering org is flat, no managers in between.
What You'll Own
- Take product engineering problems — the class of work that requires correctness and pace
- Build out more agentic behaviors for Axel and expand Axel's tool set as the agentic booking product matures
- Ship reliably with high agency, no "I need four weeks to do this" energy
Requirements
- Strong front-end chops with product-engineering depth
- Fluent with AI coding tools (Claude, Cursor, Codex) as a force multiplier, not a crutch
- Comfortable working on agentic systems — building new agent behaviors, expanding the agentic tool set, integrating LLMs into product flows
- Reads every line of code, not vibe-coding through problems without comprehension
Execution and Energy
- Natural startup energy — the candidate must clearly want startup, not "be okay with" startup.
- Has done high-agency projects naturally in their own life — started businesses, shipped personal projects, pushed through hard problems out of energy, not assignment
- Brings natural excitement and emotional ownership to difficult achievements
- High pace — moves through problems quickly
- Low ego, collaborative
Background
Has shipped real product engineering work, ideally at a startup. Someone who built things at startups before, knows how to leverage AI in the workflow, and isn't FAANG-pedigreed-without-startup-output
Location
- In person 5 days a week in Bellevue, WA — not hybrid, not remote (per prior intake)
- H-1B candidates welcome (per prior intake)
Nice-to-Have
- Previously shipped agentic / LLM-integrated product features end to end
- Background mixing strong front-end with product-engineering instincts (notices when UX is off, doesn't just implement to spec)
- Has worked at a high-growth startup through a fast scale phase (seed to A or A to B)
- Visible side projects, GitHub footprint, or shipped personal apps showing the natural-shipping instinct Stephen tests for
- Travel industry exposure