Senior Product Engineer & Client Delivery Lead

Reports to: Founder, Airful Consulting LLP Location: Remote, Nigeria-based preferred (West Africa Time / GMT+1) — alternative West African / EU-overlap timezones considered Type: Full-time contractor, paid monthly in USD or INR Compensation: $2,500–$4,000/mo (depending on seniority and breadth) + performance bonus tied to client retention Start: As soon as three reference projects can be handed off (target: 4–6 weeks from offer)

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The shape of the role

Airful is a four-year-old AI-native services LLP based in India, serving roughly fifteen active recurring clients (primarily in the US and EU) with annualised revenue of approximately $300K USD. We build full-stack products, marketing automation, and data enrichment systems for founders, agencies, and operators who want one team that thinks like a CTO, ships like a startup, and operates like a partner.

The founder is currently the single point of contact and execution lead for every client. That has to change for the business to scale. This role is the first senior hire designed to absorb both (a) ownership of multiple client engagements end-to-end and (b) hands-on engineering across the stack. It is not an account-management role and not a pure engineering role — it sits at the intersection of the two.

You will succeed in this role if you genuinely enjoy a portfolio of three to five concurrent client projects, can hold the technical architecture in your head, run a weekly check-in that earns trust, and write production-grade code in between.

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What you will own by week 8

• Three to four active client engagements end-to-end — weekly check-ins, scope decisions, architecture, build, QA, and delivery
• Direct write access to the shared codebase, with pattern reuse from Airful's internal Patterns library (the same shapes of systems recur — CRMs, ops platforms, enrichment pipelines, ad-ops layers)
• Daily coordination with the existing engineering team — code review, blocker triage, sprint planning
• Friday async client status reports
• Escalation to the Founder only on commercial or strategic decisions

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The work itself

Airful delivers across four overlapping categories. You should be strong in at least two and curious about the rest:

1. Product engineering

• Next.js 16 (App Router) + React + TypeScript + Tailwind + shadcn/ui
• Supabase (PostgreSQL + Auth + RLS + Storage + Edge Functions)
• Vercel deployments, Vercel AI Gateway
• Claude Code, Cursor, MCP server authoring — AI-native dev workflows are standard practice
• Stripe, Resend, OpenRouter (LLM routing), Anthropic / OpenAI / Gemini APIs
• Examples of the work: an internal ops platform covering invoicing, expenses, payroll, and tasks; a solo-operator ops platform; a recruiter CRM with 26,000+ candidates; data enrichment pipelines for investor relations

2. Marketing automation & ad ops

• Meta Marketing API — System User tokens, pixel + custom audiences, automated campaign deployment, daily performance log + threshold flagging
• Klaviyo Flows API — Welcome, Abandoned Cart, and Post-Purchase flows for CPG and SaaS clients
• ActiveCampaign — automation buildout, tag taxonomy, unified events endpoint
• Attio / HubSpot / Zoho — bidirectional CRM sync via API, non-destructive merge logic
• GA4 / GSC / Microsoft Clarity / Meta Insights wired into an internal analytics syncer pattern

3. Data work & enrichment

• Apify — LinkedIn, company, and contact enrichment via no-cookie actors and batched scrapes
• Exa — semantic web search for fact verification and person research
• Clay — lead enrichment workflows
• pgvector — semantic search over candidates, investors, and contacts
• Gemini Flash / Claude Haiku — cost-optimised AI synthesis at scale, including investor scoring, candidate JD matching, and market intelligence
• Building data pipelines that turn 800-row CSVs into 80-row scored shortlists in hours

4. Infrastructure & ops layer

• Cron-driven sync pipelines (Vercel Cron, Supabase Edge Functions)
• WhatsApp Cloud API, Slack webhooks, Telegram MCP
• Daily auto-commit logs (git-versioned operational data)
• Cost monitoring and ITC capture — infra cost is transparently surfaced to every client
• Anomaly detection and auto-alerting on client funnels

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Client-facing expectations

• Weekly 30-minute check-ins with each retainer client — agenda, status, blockers, next-week plan
• Live demos when scoping new work — comfort opening Cursor and showing how something works inside a call
• Scope documents within 48 hours of any discovery call — Airful's brand promise is faster turnaround than its competitors
• Honest commercial conversations — escalation to the Founder for any change that affects pricing or contract terms; everything else (technical scope adjustments, sequencing, prioritisation) is owned by this role
• Async-first written communication — Slack, Linear comments, and GitHub PR descriptions. Synchronous calls only when async is not working
• Personal warmth at the top of every call — clients are partners, not transactions. Expect to know their team and context deeply within a quarter

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What we look for

Must-haves

• 5+ years of senior-level full-stack experience (Next.js + Postgres or equivalent)
• Shipped at least two non-trivial production apps end-to-end (architecture → DB schema → API → UI → deploy → maintain)
• Demonstrated product instinct — you have designed something, not just implemented someone else's spec
• Strong client-facing track record — agency, consulting, or fractional CTO background where you ran the relationship
• Excellent written English and comfort on video calls in EU / US business hours
• Already using AI-native dev workflows (Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot, or equivalent) — not learning them on the job
• Familiarity with at least one marketing-automation platform (Meta Ads API, Klaviyo, HubSpot, ActiveCampaign, GA4 + GSC) and willingness to learn the rest
• Comfortable working across cultures — Airful's clients are American, European, African, and Indian

Strong nice-to-haves

• Open-source contributions or shipped side projects
• Previous experience at a small agency or as an independent consultant
• Worked with West African, EU, and US clients before (or willing to flex hours accordingly)
• Experience with multi-tenant SaaS architectures, role-based access control, Stripe billing, or subscription products
• Strong design sense — you can identify when a Figma is wrong even if you cannot fix it
• Spoken at meetups, written blog posts, or have a public technical voice

Disqualifiers

• "Senior" means five or more years of demonstrated ownership, not the same style of work repeated for five years
• Pure DevOps or data-engineering specialists who are uncomfortable in front of a client
• Pure freelancers — this is a long-horizon role and Airful values retention over flexibility
• No interest in marketing, ad ops, SEO, or SEM — a meaningful share of Airful's retainer work touches these areas

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Why Nigeria specifically

• Time zone: WAT (GMT+1) overlaps morning hours in Asia and the full business day in the EU, with afternoon overlap with the US East Coast — practically aligned with Airful's existing client mix
• Talent pool: Lagos, Abuja, and Kano have a strong senior-engineer pipeline, particularly in fintech and product-led companies. The Andela / Flutterwave / Paystack alumni network is dense
• Language: Native-English fluency raises the bar on client communication relative to Airful's India-based team
• Network: Airful does not currently have anyone in West Africa; this role is an opportunity to build relationships and potentially identify local clients over time
• Cost / quality: Senior Nigerian engineers earning $25K–$50K/yr locally are well aligned with Airful's $2.5K–$4K/mo offer

Candidates from elsewhere in Africa (Kenya, Ghana, South Africa) will be considered if the fit is strong, but the role description above assumes WAT working hours.

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Hiring process

1. Async first round (30 min): answer four questions in writing covering your architecture choices on a past project, your favourite production-shipped product, the worst client moment you have handled, and one thing you would change about Next.js or Supabase
2. Founder call (45 min): culture, motivation, current portfolio review
3. Paid 4-hour technical exercise: a real ticket drawn from Airful's internal ops platform ($200 paid regardless of outcome). Submit code via GitHub PR plus a 10-minute Loom walking through your decisions
4. Client simulation call (60 min): the Founder role-plays a difficult client conversation; you handle scope, technical translation, and a tough commercial moment
5. Reference checks: two deep references from prior senior managers or clients
6. Trial month at full pay — both sides hold a kill switch. The offer extends to permanent if the fit is mutual

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How to apply

Email careers@airful.io with:

• Subject: Senior Product Engineer — [Your name]
• One paragraph on why this role specifically (not "why I want to work at a startup")
• A link to your strongest production-shipped project, plus one paragraph on the hardest technical decision you made on it
• LinkedIn or GitHub or both
• Earliest possible start date

Every application receives a response within five business days. If you have not heard back by then, please re-send — we would rather acknowledge twice than miss anyone.

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What this role becomes

If the first twelve months go well, this role evolves into Head of Delivery (or equivalent title) — owning the entire client portfolio, hiring junior engineers, and shaping the team. The role does not exist today; the successful hire would build it.

If the fit does not materialise, Airful parts ways honestly with severance and a strong public reference.