Product Developer

Company Description

Nightwave AI is a law enforcement AI startup building tools that help detectives solve crimes more effectively, efficiently, and accurately.

The goal is simple: give investigators the kind of intelligence capability that only the largest agencies in the world can afford today, and put it in the hands of every department. We are a small, fast-moving team working on a problem that genuinely matters, and we are looking to connect with talented, technically driven builders who want to do serious work on a serious product. If that sounds like you, we would love to talk!

We are committed to advancing modern investigative methods while ensuring ethical and efficient processes

Role Description

Nightwave's platform is powerful under the hood. But the people using it are homicide detectives, narcotics investigators, crime analysts. These are professionals who are brilliant at their jobs and have zero patience for clunky software. The product surface you build is where all of our AI and infrastructure becomes real to them. If the interface doesn't feel right, nothing else matters.

You will be one of the founding engineers at Nightwave, working directly with the founders. Your primary focus is the frontend and product experience such as the evidence workspace, the timeline views, the interactive connection graph, the AI agent interface, the surfaces where a detective interacts with our proprietary, specialized investigative agents, the Nightwave ontology (e.g. graph, map, timeline, etc.) and decides what to act on. Your secondary focus is backend like writing integration code, building API endpoints, wiring up the data layer. We need people who can move fluidly across the stack when the situation calls for it.

You will own how real detectives use and experience Nightwave. That is a huge responsibility and we need someone who feels the weight of it.

What you'll actually be doing:

Designing and building the detective-facing product surfaces; evidence workspaces, case dashboards, entity relationship visualizations, interactive timelines, and the interfaces where investigators interact with our investigative AI agent(s)

Translating complex backend intelligence (knowledge graphs, agent outputs, cross-case connections) into interfaces that a detective can understand and act on in seconds

Owning the full frontend architecture; component systems, state management, performance optimization, microinteractions + animations, specific user flows, and the patterns that will scale as the platform grows

Building interactive data visualizations for criminal network mapping, evidence linkage, and investigative workflows

Writing backend code when you need to; API endpoints, data transformations, integration glue between the frontend and our AI and data pipelines (mostly in Python with FastAPI)

Working directly with law enforcement users to understand their workflows, watching them use the product, getting sometimes brutal feedback, and iterating based on what you see

Making design and UX decisions with speed and conviction; we are too early to have a separate design team, so you are the person ensuring this product feels exceptional

Who you are:

A strong frontend engineer with real taste; you care about interaction design, information hierarchy, and making complex data feel clear and usable

Experienced with React and TypeScript (and preferably Python and FastAPI too for backend work), and comfortable with modern frontend tooling and state management patterns

Someone who can take a complex data structure or stream (a knowledge graph, a multi-source evidence timeline, an agent reasoning chain) and figure out the right way to present it to a user who has fifteen open cases and no time to learn your interface

Capable of building beautiful data visualizations; D3, Canvas, SVG, or whatever gets the job done for network graphs, timelines, maps, and relational data

Comfortable writing backend code; you can build an API endpoint, write a database query, and integrate with services when the team needs you to

Someone who has shipped real products and knows the difference between a polished prototype and something that holds up under daily use

Entrepreneurial and self-directed; you will often be making product and design decisions yourself because at this stage, the person building it is the person deciding how it should work

Based in or willing to be in the Columbus, Ohio area (hybrid, with real in-person time)

Bonus if you have:

Experience designing for high-stakes operational users (law enforcement, military, intelligence, emergency services, healthcare)

Familiarity with graph visualization or geospatial mapping tools

An eye for information density; you know how to show a lot of data without overwhelming the user

Time at a similar industry mission-driven startup, Palantir, Anduril, Flock Safety or similar

What we offer:

Competitive salary plus meaningful early-stage equity, with flexibility on how we structure the package between cash and equity depending on what matters most to you

Direct work with law enforcement; the interfaces you build will be used by detectives investigating real crimes

A founder who is technical and will be building alongside you

The chance to define how the future of investigative technology looks and feels