Product engineering at Polar is about shaping and building the finance layer for the next generation of AI products. We’re rethinking how billing works for a world of usage-based software, programmable pricing and AI agents – from real-time metering and pricing as code, to more flexible customer identities, giving developers greater control over how they monetize their products.
We’re interested in engineers who enjoy working across our entire stack, solving complex technical challenges while shaping how developers interact with and experience Polar. We value engineers who think beyond implementation, challenge assumptions and bring the technical depth and product judgement to make sophisticated systems feel simple.
We operate as a small, remote-first team with a strong bias towards shipping. We value engineers who can work independently, collaborate when it matters and maintain a high bar for quality without sacrificing speed.
More about Polar and how we work
What you could work onDepending on your experience and where you can have the greatest impact, this could include:
Own product development end-to-end: Identifying opportunities, shipping and iterating on features across our stack – taking responsibility for both the technical implementation and the product outcome.
Build exceptional developer experiences: Bringing a strong eye for design, usability and detail to everything you ship. Turning complex billing and monetization workflows into intuitive interfaces, powerful APIs and thoughtful abstractions that make our merchants’ lives easier.
Ship with speed and quality: Delivering improvements continuously, balancing fast iterations with robust engineering, performance and attention to detail.
Stay close to our users: Engaging with our merchants, to understand how they use Polar, uncover pain points and translate feedback into meaningful product improvements.
We’re particularly interested in senior engineers who combine strong technical foundations with exceptional product judgement and design sensibility. People who care deeply about developer experience, have opinions about what makes great software and know that building the right thing often means knowing what not to build.
Some of the qualities and experience we value in this area include:
Strong technical foundations: Experience building, shipping and evolving production software, with deep expertise in at least one part of the stack and the ability to work confidently across frontend and backend systems. You’ve built and maintained products long enough to understand how early technical and product decisions hold up as they evolve and scale.
Product judgement & design sensibility: A deep appreciation for how products look, feel and work. An understanding that developer experience is the product, from the clarity of an API to the smallest details of an interface. Strong opinions, loosely held, and the judgement to challenge assumptions, simplify complexity and know what to leave out.
Ownership & pragmatic execution: The ability to take problems end-to-end with high ownership and autonomy, navigate ambiguity, make decisions without perfect information and take responsibility for outcomes. A bias towards shipping and knowing when to iterate quickly and when to invest in stronger foundations.
Engineering craft: A commitment to the quality of what gets built – from clean APIs and robust backend logic to thoughtful interactions, edge-case handling and performance. High standards for both technical quality and the experience delivered.
Curiosity & collaboration: A willingness to wear multiple hats, collaborate openly and contribute to a small team. Curiosity to learn new technologies and use tools, including AI-assisted development, while maintaining intimacy with the code, sound engineering judgement and ownership of what gets shipped.
Experience with payments, billing or developer tools is a strong plus.
We also love seeing open-source contributions and side projects.
Our stackFrontend: Typescript (React, Effect)
Backend: Python (FastAPI, Dramatiq)
Infrastructure: Postgres, Clickhouse, AWS.
Skills Required
- Experience building, shipping, and evolving production software
- Deep expertise in at least one part of the software stack
- Ability to work confidently across frontend and backend systems
- Strong product judgment and design sensibility
- Ability to take ownership of problems end-to-end and work autonomously
- Commitment to engineering quality, robust backend logic, clean APIs, performance, and edge-case handling
- Willingness to collaborate, learn new technologies, and use AI-assisted development tools
- Experience with payments, billing, or developer tools
- Open-source contributions and side projects
What We Do
It’s never been easier to build software. From open source having pushed the envelope of developer velocity to AI now accelerating the trend and making software development accessible to more people. It’s never been easier to ship and scale software. Cloud platforms and modern PaaS solutions like Vercel and Supabase have drastically simplified global software deployment and scaling. But, it’s never been harder to monetize software. We've moved from one-time purchases to SaaS, and now toward usage-based and agentic payments. Each evolution has enabled new category defining businesses, but also added complexity and billing anxiety for developers and their customers alike. This is a bottleneck for the future. We believe the next unicorns will be created by individual developers. As lines blur between indie hackers, startups, and enterprises, we're building Polar to empower solo builders and early-stage startups – the future enterprises, without the headcount. How? Monetization vs. Billing Platform. Billing is a crucial part of your customer relationship, but only a part of it - it's the outcome vs. input. We aim to bridge the gap between product analytics, CRM, and billing, providing a comprehensive platform for one-developer unicorns to scale their businesses. Usage-based on Autopilot. Automatic event ingestion for OpenAI, Anthropic, Vercel AI SDK to S3 consumption and more – easily track, credit and bill customers for their usage. We’re going to ship a lot of innovative features in this category to make usage-based and agentic payments a delight for developers and their customers. Zero Boilerplate. We obsess over reducing the lines of code in your codebase that aren't unique to your business, from automating common SaaS entitlements like license keys and usage-based credits to condensing integrations down to just four lines of code. Zero Operations. Grow globally without being held back by international sales tax, compliance, fraud, or chargeback protection.
