Senior / Staff Frontend Software Engineer (Core Product)

Backflip • San Francisco, CA

2d

About The Position

About Backflip
Mechanical design, the work done in CAD, is the rate-limiter for progress in the physical world. Despite decades of tooling, only a few million people can effectively design complex mechanical systems. But what if hundreds of millions could? What if creating something in the real world were as easy as imagining the use case, or sketching it on paper?
Backflip is building a foundation model for mechanical design. We are unifying the world’s scattered engineering knowledge into an intelligent software copilot. Makers and builders use our intuitive and effortless design environment to give them the superpower of expert mechanical design skills. Our goal is to enable anyone to imagine a solution and hit “print.”
Founded by a second-time CEO in the same space (first company: Markforged), Backflip combines deep industry insight with breakthrough AI research. Angel invested by Ashish Vaswani (coinventor of the transformer), and backed by a16z and NEA, we raised a $30M Series A and built a deeply technical, mission-driven team.
We’re building the AI foundation that tomorrow’s space elevators, nanobots, and spaceships will be built in. If you’re excited to define the next generation of hard tech, come build it with us.
The Role
We’re looking for a Senior or Staff Frontend Software Engineer to help architect, build, and ship the interactive design environment that connects human creativity to cutting-edge AI. Your work will directly shape how designers, engineers, and creators interact with our mechanical engineering foundation model, turning advanced AI capabilities into real, usable tools.
Backflip is building a foundation model for mechanical design. But intelligence alone isn’t enough, the user experience must make complex 3D engineering feel intuitive, responsive, and powerful.
You will own the front-end systems that render, manipulate, and interact with 3D mechanical objects in the browser. You’ll be responsible for shipping the features that make advanced AI feel simple, responsive, and delightful. You’ll be a key voice in the engineering team as we define the next generation of tools to create our physical world.

Requirements

• You’re fluent in the modern front-end development stack (React, typescript).
• You’ve built and shipped complex, stateful web applications.
• You have experience building real-time 3D interfaces in the browser (using WebGL, Three.js, Babylon.js, or similar).
• You are comfortable reasoning about performance bottlenecks and profiling browser-based systems.
• You’re pragmatic, product-minded, and enjoy owning features from concept to deployment. You enjoy being flexible and doing whatever it takes to achieve the mission.
• You operate with a leader’s mindset: set technical direction, create alignment and clarity with engineers and leadership, and deliver results.
• You are passionate about seeing your work shape the physical world.

Nice To Haves

• You’re strong at rendering and visualizations
• You can flex into full-stack engineering when needed.
• You have exposure to the world of mechanical engineering or related fields (aerospace, civil engineering, etc), e.g. through hobby builds, formal education, or prior professional work.

Responsibilities

• Architect and own the front-end of our core product, including UI architecture, state management, and performance.
• Build and maintain high-performance, real-time 3D visualization systems in the browser.
• Design intuitive interaction paradigms for inspecting, manipulating, and editing complex 3D geometry.
• Optimize rendering performance for large or evolving geometric datasets.
• Deploy products to production, and iterate on them based on customer experiences and feedback.
• Improve reliability, observability, and quality through testing, monitoring, and tooling.
• Contribute to product direction by translating advanced AI capabilities into elegant user experiences.

Benefits

• This is a rare opportunity to help define how physical AI becomes a tool for the imagination. You can create the interfaces and experiences that puts the world’s collective mechanical design knowledge at anyone’s fingertips.
• You’ll join a world-class, mission-driven team operating at the intersection of AI research, engineering, and deep product sense, building systems that let people design the physical world as easily as they imagine it.
• Let’s build the tools the future will be made in.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Education Level: No Education Listed