Hybrid Staff Software Engineer – New Product Discovery

at Field Nation

• Job title: Staff Software Engineer – New Product Discovery
• Job type: Full Time
• Experience level: Lead
• Salary: $143,000 - $200,000 per year
• Degree requirement: Bachelor's Degree
• Tech skills: AWS, Docker, JavaScript, Node.js, PHP, Python, React
• Location requirements: Hybrid, Minnesota, United States

About the role

• Staff Software Engineer focused on innovation and rapid prototyping for new products at Field Nation. Collaborating with business leaders to turn ideas into reality leveraging AI and agile methodologies.

Responsibilities

• Lead 0 to 1 Innovation: Take ownership of greenfield projects, taking them from a napkin sketch to a functional prototype and MVP. You will be the technical engine behind our most experimental initiatives, guiding fellow engineers to rapidly understand the problem space and technical approach required to validate the core hypothesis.
• Leverage AI-First Development: Heavily utilize AI coding assistants (Copilot, Cursor, ChatGPT, etc.) to accelerate the coding process. Your goal is to ship functional code fast, prioritizing speed of learning over architectural perfection in the early stages.
• Rapid Prototyping & Experimentation: Build "throw-away" code intentionally. You understand that the goal of an MVP is to validate a business need, not to build a legacy system. You will iterate quickly based on feedback, pivot when necessary, and discard solutions that don't work.
• Partner with Business Leaders: Work lock-step with Product, Strategy, and Customer-facing partners. You will translate their business problems into technical solutions in real-time, acting as a technical co-founder for internal innovation projects.
• Validate Market Needs: Focus relentlessly on the "Why." You will build tools not just for the sake of technology, but to prove or disprove the value of a new offering for our customers.
• Transition to Scale: Once a concept is validated and proven valuable, you will work with core engineering teams to hand off the "blueprint" for scalable implementation, or mature the MVP into a production-ready service.

Requirements

• Staff-Level Engineering Experience: 8+ years of software development experience with a strong track record of shipping full-stack applications from scratch.
• Speed & Agility: A mindset that values "done" over "perfect" during the discovery phase. You are comfortable working with ambiguity and changing requirements daily.
• AI Proficiency: Demonstrated interest or experience in using AI tools to multiply your output. You view AI as a pair programmer that handles the boilerplate while you focus on the logic and user value.
• Full-Stack Versatility: Deep experience with modern web technologies (React, Node.js, Python, or PHP) and the ability to spin up your own infrastructure (AWS, Docker) to get an app live independently.
• Business Acumen: You care about the business mechanics as much as the code. You can speak the language of stakeholders and understand the ROI of the features you build.
• Fearlessness: You aren't afraid to delete your code. You understand that in innovation, learning what doesn't work is just as valuable as finding what does.

Benefits

• Unlimited paid time off
• Annual vacation bonus - yes, we’ll pay you a bonus to take paid time off!
• Individualized growth + development plans
• Strong values around work/life balance
• Community involvement opportunities
• Competitive benefits: medical, dental, vision, paid parental leave + 401K
• Exposure to cutting-edge technologies to solve meaningful problems