Product Engineer

Cassandra is the first self-service platform for Marketing Mix Modeling: model the effectiveness of your media mix and get media plans that maximize your sales without a data science team.

Measuring marketing effectiveness used to mean six-figure consulting contracts and months of waiting. The econometrics behind it the kind of work Nielsen built an empire on was reserved for companies that could afford it. We took that niche technology and made it accessible to non-technical marketers in days instead of months at a fraction of the price.

Today we analyze over 500M in ad spend for 100 brands worldwide including Velasca Boscolo and Takomo and were a team of 20 across Rome and Milan.

Were backed by a 2M seed round led by Italian Founders Fund with PitchDrive Webranking and Mana Ventures

Were looking for a Product Engineer and we mean it literally. You wont receive specs to implement. Youll own problems: talk to marketers decide what to build ship it measure whether it worked. Our product cycles are collapsing from months to weeks and this role is how we get there.

• Own product problems end-to-end from framing them with real marketers through design and implementation to measuring adoption after release
• Ship user-facing features across the stack: React frontend Django backend on AWS
• Turn complex econometric output into interfaces a CMO can act on in five minutes
• Contribute to the ongoing redesign of the platform challenging whats already there rather than porting it over
• Use AI tooling aggressively to compress the distance between idea and production
• Work directly with our customers. Youll see the spreadsheets theyre escaping from and youll know within days whether what you shipped helped

Youll own a product metric: activation the share of new clients who reach their first actionable model and come back to it. Not a ticket you close a number you report on and defend. Its what drives our retention and its where one engineer can move the needle most. Youll see the metrics above it too: we share retention expansion and revenue with the whole team and youll be in the room when we decide what to do about them.

What were looking for

• 3 years building and shipping production software ideally in a small team where you owned features rather than tickets
• Strong across the stack with real depth on at least one side. Youre comfortable in Javascript/Python and you can build the API and data layer behind it
• Product sense: you form opinions about what should be built you argue for them and you change your mind when the data disagrees
• Comfort with ambiguity. Nobody will hand you acceptance criteria
• You can talk to a non-technical customer about their problem without steering the conversation toward the solution you already had in mind
• Fluent English (our customers are international)

Nice to have

• Experience in martech analytics or data-heavy B2B SaaS
• Familiarity with statistical modeling experimentation or MMM specifically (Robyn Meridian)
• Youve built third-party API integrations at scale and know how ugly they get
• Italian

You dont need to check every box. If youre missing one or two but the ownership part sounds like how you already work apply.

Learning budget 2000/year
Books courses certifications conferences.
If something matters more and costs more make the case. Weve never said no to someone trying to get better at their job and that brings real value to our work.

Two company retreats a year
Three or four days together. Travel and accommodation covered.

One sponsored tech/product event a year
A conference summit or workshop of your choice. Ticket travel and accommodation covered. You pick it not us.

Equity
We give stock options to people who take real ownership. That conversation usually opens after your first year based on how youve grown and how much youve taken on. Wed rather say it plainly than print a number we cant stand behind.

The hiring process

Four steps about two to three weeks end to end.

1. Intro call 30 minutes with Denis Stets (CTO of Cassandra) to cover what were building and what youre looking for.
2. Technical conversation 60 minutes we walk through something youve built. No whiteboard algorithms.
3. Product exercise a real problem from our roadmap. You get it in advance we discuss it together for an hour. No unpaid take-home work.
4. Culture call 45 minutes on where the company is going and where youd fit in it.

Youll hear back after every step including if the answer is no.

How to apply

Send your CV and one paragraph: a product decision you made that turned out to be wrong and what you did about it. That paragraph is the part we read first. No cover letter.

Your first three months

We agree on goals with you on day one written down specific decided together not handed to you. We review them at three between you get real support: direct access to the CTO the founders and the customers and a weekly conversation about whats blocking you. Wed rather tell you what we expect than let you guess for a quarter.

Your team lead

Youll join the Engineering & Product team and report directly to Denis Stets CTO based in Rome.

This isnt a job for someone looking for a quiet ride. Were trying to define a market and become the first in the world at what we do and that means the pace is high and the ambiguity is real.

What I offer in exchange is ownership. Youll decide what to build not just how. Youll talk to the people using it. Youll see your work in production in days not quarters.

If you want hard problems and you want to grow fast this is the right place. If you want a stable backlog handed to you every Monday it isnt.