Frontend Super SWE

P-1 AI

Location: United States, Canada
Job Type: full-time
Salary: $200K – $250K
Posted: September 12, 2025

Job Description

About you:

create user interfaces that are efficient, effective, and delightful, and believe that getting it right matters
go from 0 → 1 on an idea before breakfast
always learning
have undeniable real-world proof-of-talent you can share with us
believe in manifesting the future of physical engineering

About us:

We are building an engineering AGI. We founded P-1 AI with the conviction that the greatest impact of artificial intelligence will be on the built world—helping mankind conquer nature and bend it to our will. Our first product is Archie, an AI engineer capable of quantitative and spatial reasoning over physical product domains that performs at the level of an entry-level design engineer. We aim to put an Archie on every engineering team at every industrial company on earth.

Our founding team includes the top minds in model-based engineering, deep learning, and the industries that are our customers. We just closed a $23 million seed round led by Radical Ventures that includes a number of other AI and industrial luminaries. We invite you to join our team of the world’s best engineers and AI researchers, building AI’s most impactful use case.

In summary:

we are on a mission
multiple hats is the norm
no politics, low bureaucracy
fast, data-driven decision-making; velocity and agility are everything
believe in manifesting the future of physical engineering

About the role:

We are a small team tackling an ambitious problem. If we are successful, it will change the course of history. As such we have a very high talent bar and are looking for people who have done something remarkable.

This role is for an exceptional frontend developer who shares our belief that nailing the user interface and user experience will be essential for delivering on our mission and winning the loyalty of our users. We are enlisting a world-class designer to work alongside you to get the look & feel right as well.

Since wearing many hats is the norm, you’ll be involved in architecture, backend, and infrastructure definition as required.

This role can be either remote (based in US or Canada and with existing work authorization) or based in our SF office. If you are remote, you should plan to spend one week out of six co-working with the rest of the company in our SF office. We will support relocation for candidates interested in moving to SF.

Interview process:

Initial screening - with Head of Talent (30 mins)
Hiring manager interview - with co-founder & Head of Engineering (45 mins)
Programming interview based around modifying a frontend (60 mins)
- Bring your own dev environment and tools
Culture fit / Q&A - with co-founder & CEO (30 mins)

🎯 Who is this job for?

This role is perfect for a Senior Frontend Engineer with exceptional real-world skills in crafting high-performance, intuitive UIs and a passion for early-stage startups. Candidates should excel in 0→1 product development, thrive in fast-paced, low-bureaucracy environments, and be open to contributing across the stack. A strong portfolio, interest in AI, and comfort with equity-heavy compensation are essential.

💬 Potential Interview Questions

How would you architect a React app that renders complex 2D/3D scenes (CAD-like) at 60+ FPS?
Keep rendering imperative and isolated from React (refs, no per-frame setState); drive frames with requestAnimationFrame, batch updates, use OffscreenCanvas + Workers, and only sync minimal UI state back to React.
WebGL vs WebGPU—when do you choose each for an engineering UI?
WebGL is widely supported and fine for standard pipelines; WebGPU offers modern compute, better parallelism, and lower CPU overhead—choose it for heavy geometry, GPGPU kernels, or advanced PBR where you control the pipeline.
How do you stream and display massive models/data in the browser without blowing memory?
Use incremental streaming (glTF + Draco/meshopt), KTX2 compressed textures, spatial indexing (BVH) + frustum/occlusion culling, LOD/tile-based loading, and dispose GPU resources deterministically.
What’s your approach to real-time collaboration and offline edits in a complex editor?
Use CRDTs (e.g., Yjs/Automerge) for conflict-free merges, broadcast via WebSocket/WebRTC, persist local ops for offline, and reconcile presence/locks at the view layer—not the model.
How do you isolate heavy compute (geometry, solvers, AI tools) from the UI thread?
Move work to Web Workers or WASM modules; share data via Transferable/SharedArrayBuffer (with COOP/COEP), stream partial results, and keep UI responsive using React 18 transitions.
How do you profile and fix input latency/jank in a React app?
Use Performance panel + React Profiler to find long tasks, split work with useTransition/defer values, memoize selectors, virtualize large lists/canvases, and ensure event handlers are free of sync I/O.
What patterns keep state manageable in a large 0→1 product?
Separate server cache (React Query/SWR) from UI state (Zustand/Jotai), normalize entities, use event-sourced actions for auditability, and co-locate state with features via module boundaries.
How do you secure an app that loads untrusted content or plugins?
Enforce strict CSP + Trusted Types, sandbox untrusted code in iframes/Workers with postMessage, sanitize HTML (DOMPurify), validate messages with zod, and sign/verify plugin manifests.
How would you design a first-class LLM/agent UX in the product?
Stream tokens with SSE/WebSocket, surface tool-call steps with deterministic JSON schemas, allow user interrupts/corrections, and record prompts/results for evals and reproducibility.
What does a pragmatic CI/CD + quality bar look like for a tiny, fast team?
Monorepo (pnpm/Turborepo), type-check + ESLint + unit tests on PR, Playwright smoke + visual diffs on main, perf budgets (Core Web Vitals) in CI, and feature-flagged canary releases with instant rollback.

📋 Job Summary

P-1 AI, a well-funded early-stage startup backed by \$23M in seed funding, is hiring a Frontend Super SWE to craft exceptional UIs for its core product—Archie, an AI engineer for the physical world. You'll work closely with world-class designers and engineers, owning 0→1 UI experiences in a high-velocity, low-bureaucracy environment. The role offers \$200K–\$250K salary plus significant equity, is fully remote (US/Canada), and includes regular in-person co-working weeks in San Francisco. Perfect for builders ready to help shape the future of engineering through AI.