Contract Product Developer Jobs in Texas (NOW HIRING)

Houston; New York; San Francisco; Seattle

We’re seeking a Staff Product Engineer to define the paved roads developers use to adopt, operate, and scale on Nscale, from first API call to production workloads.

This is a high-impact IC role for someone who operates beyond a single squad: setting technical direction, owning multi-quarter roadmaps, and driving cross-team delivery for developer-facing products and paved roads.

You’ll work end-to-end across discovery, design, build, and iteration, partnering closely with Product, Design, Platform, SRE, and Security, to ship developer experiences that are measurable improvements in speed, reliability, and trust.

• Owns strategy and outcomes for a DevEx domain (e.g., onboarding & activation, API/SDK experience, Console/Fleet Manager foundations, IaC workflows, or internal developer tooling).
• Influences multiple teams by establishing standards, reusable components, and clear paved roads.
• Leads cross-team technical programs from strategy through delivery; navigates ambiguity and makes high-leverage trade-offs.
• Raises the quality bar through instrumentation, reliability discipline, and operational ownership.

• Set direction and roadmap: define a multi-quarter strategy for a DevEx domain, including sequencing, milestones, and success metrics.
• Lead cross-team delivery: drive execution across teams and repos; align dependencies, unblock delivery, and ensure high-quality outcomes.
• Build and evolve core DevEx surfaces and foundations:
  • Console/Fleet Manager experiences and shared UI foundations
  • Developer tooling (CLIs, generators, templates, local dev workflows)
  • API/SDK experience (ergonomics, versioning, examples, docs)
  • Terraform/IaC workflows and operational patterns
  • Documentation and onboarding flows that reduce time-to-first-success
• Instrument and iterate: define KPIs (activation/time-to-first-success, adoption funnels, reliability, latency, satisfaction), implement telemetry, and build feedback loops.
• Establish durable quality gates: pragmatic testing strategy, performance budgets, accessibility standards, observability, and safe release patterns (feature flags, canaries/rollbacks).
• Drive platform coherency: standardize patterns and shared components so product squads integrate cleanly without central gatekeeping.
• Security and governance: ensure RBAC/IAM, PII handling, auditability, and safe defaults are built into developer workflows.
• Mentor and multiply: coach senior engineers, raise engineering standards via design reviews and patterns, and help teams adopt DevEx paved roads.

• Significant experience shipping developer-facing products or platforms (tooling, portals, APIs/SDKs, docs, dashboards) with strong product sense and engineering fundamentals.
• The tech you’ll be using includes Go, TypeScript / React, OpenAPI, CLIs, SDKs, Terraform providers, telemetry, and automation.
• Proficiency in Go, or clear evidence you can ramp quickly in Go-based developer tooling.
• Proven ability to operate at Staff scope: leading ambiguous cross-team work through strategy, architecture, and delivery.
• Strong full-stack capability across TypeScript / React, Go-based tooling, telemetry, and automation.
• Experience with OpenAPI-driven or contract-first development.
• Track record of operational ownership: reliability, performance, and safe incremental delivery in production.
• Strong written communication: can write specs and RFCs that translate into systems that are built, tested, and maintained.
• Practical experience using AI as a force multiplier in workflow and/or product, with attention to cost/latency and reliability.

• Experience shipping CLIs, SDKs, Terraform providers/modules, or other tools developers automate against.
• Release engineering for developer tools, including semantic versioning, deprecation policy, signed releases, package registries, or compatibility guarantees.
• Experience scaling a design system or shared UI foundations across multiple product teams.
• Experience building AI-assisted developer features with strong evaluation and observability.
• Experience with cloud/platform products and operator workflows (auditing, IAM, reliability/observability).

• A key developer journey measurably improves (activation, time-to-first-success, reliability, or satisfaction) and the improvements sustain over time.
• Multiple teams adopt shared DevEx paved roads and standards, reducing bespoke solutions and integration friction.
• Delivery speed increases without sacrificing quality, backed by stable metrics and reliable release signals.

The range below reflects the base salary for the position. Actual compensation may vary based on job-related factors such as skill set, experience, education, and location. In addition to base salary, this role may be eligible for bonus, equity, and/or commission programs. Nscale may offer a competitive benefits package including medical, dental, vision, flexible paid time off, parental leave, and retirement plan participation.

Salary Range

$220,000 - $266,667 USD

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