Product Engineer

Our mission at Ello is simple and urgent: maximize the potential of every child, everywhere. We're building the world's first AI teacher to close that gap: one that listens, speaks, adapts, and inspires, just like the best human educators. Our first product, Read with Ello, is already helping tens of thousands of kids each week learn to read. It listens as they read aloud, offers support when they stumble, and generates magical, personalized stories. It works, and kids love it. Now, we're scaling that success into something even bigger: a complete AI teacher that can help children learn far beyond reading. Our new app combines language, speech, and memory to deliver interactive learning for kids worldwide; check it out here https://www.ello.com/. We're moving fast: we ship weekly, test directly with kids, and push the boundaries of what's possible with AI in education. With the resources of the world's top investors and the heart of a public benefit corporation, we're here to revolutionize how children learn globally. Featured on TIME's Best Inventions and Fortune's Change the World, Ello is a small, mission-driven team taking on one of the most important challenges of our time: to democratize education. WHO YOU'LL BE JOINING You'll work day to day with a small team of engineers, learning designers, artists, and PMs building Ello's next-generation AI tutoring app. We work in person out of our San Francisco office 3 days a week because we do our best work face to face. ABOUT THE ROLE We're hiring a Product Engineer who builds complete user experiences across the full stack: the Flutter app kids touch, the backend that powers it, and the AI systems behind it. You'll take a contained project, like a new set of interactive pre-K learning activities, a conversation with the AI character kids talk to, or the progress system children use to see their growth, and carry it from rough idea to something kids are playing with, building every layer it needs along the way. You'll do that with light direction: we'll give you the problem and the context, and you'll figure out the shape of the solution. This role spans pods. In a given month you might work with learning designers on how an activity should teach, with ML engineers on how the AI tutor should respond, and with a PM on how a feature should change engagement. You don't need a designer to hand you mockups: you're an engineer first, comfortable owning the data model, APIs, and AI integration a feature needs, with the product sense to build a polished experience on top of it. We care more about judgment, creativity, agency, and demonstrated impact than a specific number of years. You'll prototype a feature on Monday, put it in front of kids that week, and ship it the next. WHAT YOU'LL DO - Own projects and features end to end, from concept to playtest to release - Build full-stack user experiences that span the Flutter app, backend services and APIs, and the AI systems behind them, with polished front ends that work within Ello's design system and brand - Bring Ello's characters and learning activities to life, from the AI behavior and data that power them to the interaction details that make a child feel seen - Partner with learning designers, activity creators, artists, and PMs, and keep them aligned on scope, tradeoffs, and progress - Build the backend and AI layers behind your features: Python services and APIs, LLM prompts and agent behavior, and integrations with speech and language models, partnering with ML engineers on deeper model work - Test directly with kids, read the data on what you shipped, and iterate KEY REQUIREMENTS The strongest candidates will be excellent in at least two of these areas and solid in the third: - Engineering: you ship high-quality full-stack work on your own, from the Flutter client through backend services to the AI systems behind them - Product craft: you can build polished, intuitive UI without a mockup and notice when an interaction feels off - Product judgment: you can turn a fuzzy problem into a scoped project and know what's worth building You'll also bring: - Production experience shipping full-stack products: a mobile frontend (Flutter is ideal; native iOS or Android works too) plus the backend services and APIs behind it. We care most about your ability to learn and deliver - A track record of shipping products end to end with little direction (an initiative you championed at work, a side project people use, or a company you founded): you can create something from nothing, turn ambiguity into a plan, and follow through - A very high level of attention to detail and product craft. For example, you see how a small change in a character's expression or the timing of an animation changes how a moment feels - The judgment to balance speed with quality and the confidence to ship partial solutions when that is the fastest way to learn - You get up to speed quickly on unfamiliar code and can make good technical decisions with incomplete information - Clear, proactive communication with non-engineering partners. You flag risks early and don't need a manager chasing status - Hands-on backend experience (Python, APIs, data models) and experience integrating LLMs or other AI services into production features, plus comfort owning CI and release workflows - You use AI coding tools (Claude Code, Cursor, or similar) as a core part of how you build, and can explain what changed in your workflow because of them NICE TO HAVE - Experience building products for children, or for learning - Experience with animation and interactive motion in production apps (Rive, Lottie, or similar) - Deeper experience with GenAI systems: speech pipelines, agent orchestration, or evals - Experience as a product manager or founder, or a design background - Experience with mobile performance and scaling across devices and screen sizes WE LOOK FOR CANDIDATES WHO - Have something to teach us - Want to do work they are proud of to ship products they are proud of - Have an urge to make a real impact on child development at scale - Take initiative and full ownership of their work - Prefer open and direct communication grounded in empathy to beating around the bush - Exemplify integrity in their actions, decisions, and communication - Want to build meaningful relationships at work REASONS TO JOIN US - Own whole features in an AI tutor that kids use every day, and watch children play with what you built - Build across the whole stack, from the Flutter app to the AI systems that shape how Ello's characters respond, which is a big part of why kids come back - Work across engineering, AI, learning science, and design on a team small enough that your judgment changes the product - Join an A+ team with a culture of engineering excellence ABOUT ELLO Ello is a public benefit corporation on a mission to maximize the potential of all children. We're currently around ~50 people, headquartered in San Francisco with a second office in Nairobi, Kenya. Our team has deep expertise in artificial intelligence, K-12 education, and child development across institutions such as Stanford, Berkeley, Google, Apple, and more. We were part of Y Combinator's W20 batch and are funded by world-class investors including Goodwater Capital, Homebrew, Reed Hastings, Common Sense Growth, Ravensburger, Project A Ventures, Reach Capital, Khosla Ventures, WndrCo, Visible Ventures, and K9 Ventures. We're a small, collaborative team that takes each other's voices very seriously. Because our mission is to support all children, it is critical that our team is representative of the communities we work in; we place significant emphasis on ensuring diversity in our team and inclusion in our culture. If you have questions about immigration, reach out to us at [email protected]. We feel enormously privileged to be building at this moment. Advances in AI have made it possible, for the first time, to imagine giving every child a truly personalized teacher. We don't take that opportunity for granted. We work with urgency because millions of children can't wait. We care deeply about craftsmanship because learning experiences should feel magical. And we believe it's possible to build ambitious technology while building a company where people do the best work of their careers. If that excites you, we'd love to meet you. At Ello, diversity is a moral imperative and a competitive advantage. We do not discriminate based on race, religion, skin color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. We plan and structure our interviews to assess skills and experience directly. If you need accommodations throughout the interview process, please contact [email protected].