Product Engineer, Tech Ops
👋 About Advocate
Advocate (joinadvocate.com) is transforming how Americans access government benefits. Our mission is to drive the time between need and relief down to zero. We have demonstrated significant progress toward this goal by combining proprietary AI-powered technology with expert human care and compassion. This approach provides an unparalleled experience for our claimants and, crucially, supports our government partners by reducing administrative burdens and enabling more efficient eligibility determinations.
We’ve proven our cutting-edge AI technology works. Now, we are focused on scaling the distribution of our offering and the operations that support it. This is a unique challenge that requires a combination of high-tech precision and human-centered support.
Tech Ops at Advocate
At Advocate, the Tech Ops team is the connective tissue of the organization. We sit at the intersection of technology, marketing, and operations, ensuring these functions remain perfectly synchronized as we scale. We are not an IT support desk; we are front-line builders. We operate in the trenches alongside our internal users who work directly with our claimants. Our mandate is twofold:
1. Short-Term Agility: We keep the lights on and the systems humming. When roadblocks appear in production, we are there to patch them and ensure our team can continue serving claimants without friction.
2. Long-Term Scalability: We don't just fix problems; we observe patterns. We recognize recurring operational challenges and build scalable technology solutions that eliminate those hurdles for good.
Tech Ops serves at the pleasure of those serving our claimants, empowering them to do their very best work every single day while contributing to our overall mission to drive time-to-relief down to zero.
💪 The Opportunity
We are hiring for two Product Engineers to join our Tech Ops team. If you join us, these are some of the projects you will likely own:
</> The End-to-End Journey Workbench. This is one of our most ambitious initiatives. We are building a centralized internal workbench to visualize the entire claimant journey, from the first ad click to the final case closure. You will build the connectivity and insights to track every onboarding step, Social Security submission, case data update, medical event, and communication touchpoint. This platform will allow us to see exactly where pipelines fail, where they succeed, and what the actual human experience feels like across the entire lifecycle.
</> Building the External Claimant Portal. Today, claimants get updates by talking directly to our case managers. Internal and external user sentiment is overwhelming: we need a portal where users can pull real-time case status, push medical evidence directly from their providers, and receive critical updates. You could own this build from architectural design to user adoption.
</> Engineering the Growth Engine. We are scaling our marketing operations. This involves building data warehouse pipelines to trigger outbound communications via platforms like Iterable, integrating with PPC platforms (Google, Meta, Microsoft) for conversion tracking, and ensuring our attribution models are bulletproof. You will be the primary bridge between engineering and our growth team.
</> AI-Driven Developer Velocity. We want to turn "I see something" into "We did something" faster than ever. We are building a pipeline that takes change requests from Slack and uses LLMs with full repository context to automatically open a Pull Request for engineer review. We aim to automate the distance between operational feedback and production fixes.
</> Front-Line Firefighting & System Resilience. TechOps is a high-availability environment. While we build for the future, we also protect the present. You will field ad hoc requests and production fires, ensuring our claimants never lose access to relief. You will be expected to master the balance between short-term viability and long-term stability: fixing the immediate issue while refactoring the system so it stays fixed for good.
</> Next-Gen Platform Migration. As our Platform Engineering team builds the infrastructure to support new government benefits, such as Veterans’ affairs, you will lead the migration and integration of our current tech stack onto this new architecture, ensuring zero downtime for our active operations.
</> Operational Digitization & Automation. We still deal with the physical world. You will work on projects to digitize and automate physical mail processing, automate complex government forms, and establish deep observability across all our systems to create a single source of truth for our data.
👨🚒 The Requirements
We operate as a high-leverage, specialized unit at Advocate. We are a small team of A-players who value excellence, high availability, and bias for action. We don’t just maintain systems; we are the force multipliers for the entire organization.
</> Extreme Ownership. We need proactive drivers who own projects from gut feeling to production success. You don’t ask "Are we there yet?" You build the map and drive the car. You take responsibility for the ongoing success of your work, including opex, user adoption, and long-term stability.
</> User-Obsessed Iteration. Great product engineers don't just read tickets; they build relationships with their users. You’ll talk to our users frequently, bounce ideas off them, and humble yourself to build what they actually need. You treat user feedback and system data as your primary north star.
</> Observability over Guesswork. You believe that if it isn't measured, it isn't finished. You bake deep observability into every system you build so that data, not just opinions, drives our roadmap. By making system health and user behavior visible, you ease the burden of decision-making and allow the team to move faster with higher confidence.
</> Massive Imperfect Action. You have a heavy bias toward shipping. You understand that the perfect tenth iteration is only possible after shipping versions one through nine. You’d rather ship a helpful MVP today and iterate tomorrow than spend a month in a back room building a masterpiece that no one asked for.
</> Optimistic Problem Solvers. TechOps is challenging. Between scaling systems, shipping complex features, and handling a stream of support requests, things get hard. We need people who won't get disheartened, people who will collaborate, iterate, and ship their way out of any corner.
</> The "Camera On" Mindset. This isn't a role for the lone wolf developer. You are part of a high-availability, highly collaborative team. You are comfortable being disrupted, you stay available to your peers, and you thrive in an environment where communication is constant and transparent.
</> Technical Excellence in the Age of AI. While AI helps us move faster, you provide the foundational CS principles and architectural oversight that tools can't. You focus on scalability, maintainability, and deep observability. You ensure the systems we build are well-architected, stable, and easy to support when they break.
</> The Support-Build Balance. You have the patience and professional maturity to balance new system build-outs with the reality of ongoing support. You take pride in maintaining a healthy codebase and refactoring systems to ensure they remain reliable as we grow.
</> Trust and Feedback over Process. We value autonomy over control. You are expected to give and receive direct, constructive feedback and be generous with praise when it’s earned. You don't wait for sign-offs or permission; you push forward based on intuition and data.
👨💻 Tech Stack
- Full-stack (TypeScript): TypeScript, React, Next.js, Nx, Node.js, GraphQL — building and maintaining full-stack apps in a monorepo.
- Data: PostgreSQL, TypeORM, Redis — schema design, migrations, caching, and query performance.
- Infrastructure: AWS, Terraform, Docker — running and evolving cloud infra and containerized services.
- Integrations: Salesforce, Zendesk — CRM and support tooling, APIs, and sync patterns.
- Marketing: Customer.io or Iterable, Webflow, paid ads (Google, Meta, Microsoft), conversion tracking — lifecycle messaging, marketing sites, paid campaigns, and attribution.
- AI: LLM integration in production — prompting, tool use, RAG/agents, evaluation and safety, and when to use AI vs other approaches.
- Quality & observability: Sentry, PostHog, Playwright — errors, product analytics, and reliable browser automation and E2E tests.
- Data/analytics: Python, Databricks — pipelines, notebooks, and analytics workflows.
💰 Benefits
- Comprehensive Health & Wellness: Access a full suite of medical, dental, and vision plans for you and your family, including $0 premium options and FSA/HSA accounts to suit your needs.
- Time to Recharge: Balance work and life with 15 days of accrued PTO, 11 paid federal holidays, and dedicated sick leave for recovery and medical appointments.
- Family-First Support: We provide 8 weeks of paid parental leave for all parents, plus an additional 2-week flex time transition period to help you ease back into work.
- Professional Growth: Invest in your career with a $500 annual learning stipend plus 2 dedicated Growth Days each year to focus exclusively on your professional development.
- Flexible Remote Culture: Work from wherever you are most productive. We use Slack and Gather to stay connected across time zones and host in-person team offsites up to six times per year.
- Compensation & Ownership: We offer market-competitive salaries with performance-based raises and equity grants, ensuring every employee shares in Advocate’s long-term success.
⚙️ Interview Process
1. Application. Our Tech Ops team will review your application. We’re looking to see how your skills and experience align with our needs.
2. Culture Interview. 45-minute video call with Kyle, Head of Tech Ops. Our goal is to explore your motivations to join our team, learn why you'd be a great fit, and answer questions about us.
3. Technical Interview. 75-minute video call with Kyle and Min, Tech Ops Product Engineer. You’ll choose from a list of current problem statements at the company – things you could very well be working on – and lead us through user interviews, requirements gathering, solutioning tradeoffs, and architecture diagramming. We want to see how you think and experience what it’s like to work with you on hard problems.
4. Company Interview. 30-minute video call with our CTO, Charley.
5. Offer. We’re a match! We’ll make you an offer to join the Advocate team!