Hi! We're Forerunner.

We believe that climate adaptation is a necessity, not a luxury, and communities deserve access to powerful software that helps them plan for the future. The challenge of climate change is complex – it implicates how municipalities plan, manage capital, and communicate to both residents and higher levels of government. Forerunner helps local communities do these things better by empowering them to access, understand, and mobilize local-level flood risk data at scale.

The Role

We're looking for a Senior Full-Stack Engineer with 5+ years of product engineering experience to join our Data, Platforms, and Infrastructure team. You'll implement features that help build resilient communities - from real-time flood risk visualizations to automated permit workflows that cut response times from weeks to hours. This is a product ownership role where you'll work directly with government users who are on the frontlines of climate adaptation.

You'll work on both backend and customer-facing features using TypeScript, React, PostgreSQL with PostGIS for geospatial analysis, and AWS. Your work will include processing hundreds of different geospatial datasets, creating intuitive interfaces for complex grant application workflows, and building APIs that integrate with a variety of different government systems - modernizing how America prepares for and adapts to climate change.

We offer schedule flexibility and ask for accountability in return. We are unable to sponsor H1-B visas at this time, so permanent residency or citizenship is required.

We strongly encourage people from underrepresented groups to apply - the problem of climate change impacts all of us, and we want to reflect that within our team's composition.

What You'll Do

• Gather around the campfire. Engineering, product, design, and customer success aren't siloed teams — we build together. You'll hear feedback from the people who use what you ship, and that context shapes what comes next.
• Drive projects from ambiguity to delivery. You'll get a problem and a goal, not a step-by-step plan. We trust our engineers to break down complexity, make smart tradeoffs, and keep things moving.
• Work with the best tools, not just the best people. We're all-in on AI-assisted development — Cursor, Claude Code, and whatever comes next. If you've already used AI to plan and execute projects from a spec or scaffold out entire features, you'll fit right in.
• Build the whole thing. You'll own features from database modeling to pixel-perfect UI — no tossing work over the wall to "the other team." New API endpoint in the morning, polished frontend by the afternoon? That's a Wednesday here.
• Ship constantly, and ship things that matter. This isn't a maintenance gig. Roughly 80% of your time goes toward new capabilities our customers are asking for, with the rest spent making the systems underneath faster, more reliable, and easier to work in.
• Own what you ship. The people who build the system are the best ones to keep it healthy. We run a fair on-call rotation and invest heavily in keeping alerts meaningful and manageable. We treat reliability as a craft — not a chore.
• Raise the bar for everyone. How we build matters as much as what we build. You'll help shape our engineering culture — improving our processes, refining our tech stack, and mentoring teammates along the way.

What We're Looking For

• A product engineer, not just a coder. 5+ years of experience building and shipping features that real users depend on — not just writing code, but owning outcomes.
• Full-stack fluency. Deep comfort with TypeScript, React, and working across the stack — backend to frontend and everything in between.
• Data at your core. Strong SQL and database design instincts — you think in schemas, not just queries.
• A history of leading by example. Through mentorship, code reviews, and sound technical decision-making — not because it's in your job description, but because it's how you work.
• At home in ambiguity.