ThinkingAI is hiring a Founding AI Product Engineer, English/Mandarin, in Sunnyvale to bridge US enterprise customers and the Shanghai R&D team.

# Founding AI Product Engineer, English/Mandarin Company: ThinkingAI Location: Sunnyvale, California, United States Work style: Onsite / Hybrid Website: https://thinkingai.io ThinkingAI is a self-hosted enterprise AI agent platform that connects business data, internal knowledge, and workflows so AI agents can detect issues, recommend actions, execute workflows, and verify outcomes. ## About the Role We are seeking a Founding Engineer (AI & Product) as our first dedicated technical leader on the ground in the US. This role acts as the primary technical bridge between our Shanghai core R&D team and fast-growing US enterprise customers. You will focus on three core pillars: 1. Drive the global AI product roadmap 2. Deliver high-impact US-specific features and solutions 3. Translate US customer insights into actionable product requirements This is not a pure backend role, nor a pure presales role. It is a customer-facing AI engineering role with strong product sense: building real features while owning the US market technical feedback loop. ## Core Responsibilities 1. Global AI Product Engineering (60-70%) - Contribute to the shared global engineering roadmap alongside the Shanghai team. - Build, test, and ship production-grade AI features, including LLM workflows, agent pipelines, and integrations. - Maintain high engineering standards across code quality, observability, security, and scalability. 2. US Market Feature Delivery (20-30%) - For strategic US enterprise deals only, scope, prototype, and ship small, high-impact features or workarounds to unblock key customers. - Execute with fast turnaround: days, not weeks; lightweight but production-safe. - Keep a clear boundary: no endless customization, only high-value and repeatable use cases. 3. US Customer Technical Voice & Feedback Loop - Regularly engage US enterprise customers to understand real usage, pain points, and willingness-to-pay features. - Translate insights into clear PRDs and technical proposals, with build-cost awareness rather than wishlists. - Filter US AI ecosystem noise: track frameworks, models, and patterns from OpenAI, Anthropic, and open source, then surface only relevant and actionable signals for the roadmap. 4. Strategic GTM & Collaboration - Lead high-level product demos, solution architecture reviews, and complex integration scoping for top US deals. - Partner closely with Shanghai R&D on specs, acceptance criteria, release plans, and post-launch feedback. - Document and reuse demo templates, integration patterns, and solution playbooks for US enterprise scenarios. ## Qualifications & Requirements - 5+ years building and shipping production-grade software, with strong full-stack or backend engineering skills. - Proven AI/LLM experience: hands-on building with LLMs, vector databases, and agent frameworks, with a track record from prototype to production. - Product-minded engineer: comfortable talking to enterprise customers, framing problems, and proposing technical solutions. - Extreme ownership and speed: thrives in ambiguity and has a bias for shipping working code over process. - Cross-border collaboration: able to work overlapping hours with Shanghai and communicate clearly through async specs, written reviews, and structured feedback. - Fluent English and fluent Mandarin. ## Candidate Search Signals AI engineer, product engineer, full-stack engineer, founding engineer, solutions engineer, forward deployed engineer, LLM workflows, AI agents, agentic AI, RAG, tool calling, vector databases, Python, TypeScript, React, backend systems, integrations, enterprise SaaS, customer-facing engineering, enterprise POCs, solution architecture, technical product sense, Mandarin / Chinese bilingual communication.