AI Product Engineer

Seed-Stage Generative AI Startup in Food & Beverage
Los Angeles or Seattle Hybrid

About Zucca

CPG product launches are complex and costly: teams work in silos, rely on sequential handoffs, and chase misaligned goals. The result is rework, delays, and failed launches. More than 30,000 products launch every year, yet many take 18+ months to develop and never reach their potential.

Zucca is an agentic platform that manages operational complexity for CPG product development teams, so brands can grow faster and smarter. It's part workspace, part AI teammate: one place where R&D and cross-functional partners work alongside Zucca agents to manage and create formulas, BOMs, specs, and labeling that holds up to regulatory scrutiny. At every step, teams can pressure-test feasibility and run scenarios before they commit, and every detail stays connected and current as the product evolves. The result: shorter cycles, fewer costly surprises, and more products that hit their potential on shelf.

The Role

As an AI product engineer on a small but mighty team, you're a foundational owner of the product. We're looking for someone with 3+ years of full-stack experience that has high agency, ships fast, and cares about the business impact of doing so. This person must be product-minded, deeply curious in the why, and relentless about getting to the best answers quickly.

What You'll Do

• Own the Lifecycle: Design, build, and ship end-to-end features—from React frontends to the backend and AI systems behind them.
• Build the tools we build with: Agent skills, evals, monitoring, dashboards, and test patterns are how a small team ships AI features fast without breaking them. You'll build and maintain them alongside the product.
• Harness AI Pragmatically: Integrate AI into our core workflows, pushing what LLMs can do for F&B product development while staying grounded in their limits to protect data integrity.
• Solve Complex Data Workflows: Turn the messy reality of CPG R&D—spreadsheets, siloed specs, sequential handoffs—into one seamless, auditable, collaborative experience.
• Build a Transparent Culture: Document technical decisions and architecture so that as we grow, technical debt stays low and context sharing stays high.

We're Excited About You Because

• You're Product-Minded First: You think like a PM before you open your editor. You don't wait for a perfect spec; you ask "Why?" and own the outcome.
• You are a Proactive, High-Signal Communicator: You keep context flowing through clear docs, detailed Linear tickets, Slack threads, and efficient Zoom syncs.
• You are AI-Fluent: You already use AI tools to accelerate your own work, and know where Generative AI adds real value.
• You Evaluate What You Ship: You've built evaluations for classification and extraction use cases. You treat a prompt change like a code change, measuring it before it ships.
• Full-Stack Proficiency: Deep experience with React, Node.js, and Next.js, and comfort with AWS and modern server-rendering/data-fetching patterns.
• You Value Clarity: You explain technical trade-offs clearly to non-technical stakeholders and thrive on async collaboration and transparency.
• You Benefit from Coaching, Not Management: You're self-directed—you value feedback and mentorship, but you take a vague problem and run with it to completion.

Why Join Zucca?

• Impact at a high-potential startup: Zucca's growth is directly impacted by the work you do each day
• AI focus: Build at the cutting edge of applied AI
• Compensation: $125k - $175k base salary + meaningful equity
• Benefits: 100% paid health benefits for employee and 50% for family, and 401k
• Flexible work environment: Los Angeles or Seattle Hybrid

To Apply

• Email - jesse@zucca.ai with subject line "AI Product Eng" with the reason (no more than one paragraph) why you're the right fit for this opportunity.

Diversity & Inclusion

Zucca is an equal-opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. We prohibit discrimination based on race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, disability status, or any other legally protected status.