Application Guide

How to Apply for Internal AI Product Engineer (f/m/x) - remote

at refurbed

🏢 About refurbed

refurbed is a fast-growing marketplace for refurbished electronics, driven by a mission to make sustainable tech accessible to everyone. With a strong remote-first culture and a team passionate about circular economy, you'll work on meaningful AI projects that directly impact operational efficiency and environmental goals.

About This Role

As Internal AI Product Engineer, you'll own the full lifecycle of internal AI tools—from designing scalable back-end services to driving product roadmaps. You'll bridge engineering and business needs, embedding AI into workflows that help refurbed scale sustainably while reducing e-waste.

💡 A Day in the Life

Your morning starts with a standup with the AI platform team, discussing progress on an internal chatbot for customer support. You spend the afternoon coding a Python microservice that integrates with a vector database, then review a junior engineer's PR for an LLM pipeline. Later, you meet with the operations team to gather requirements for automating device grading.

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🎯 Who refurbed Is Looking For

  • Senior back-end engineer with deep Go/Python expertise and production experience on GCP (e.g., Cloud Run, BigQuery, Pub/Sub).
  • Proven track record of deploying LLM-based systems in production, including prompt engineering, RAG, and cost optimization.
  • Product-minded: you've owned a product area end-to-end, from user research and PRDs to defining success metrics and iterating based on feedback.
  • Comfortable with modern AI tooling (LangChain, vector databases, model serving) and excited to mentor others on AI best practices.

📝 Tips for Applying to refurbed

1

Highlight specific production AI/LLM projects you've deployed, including scale (users, requests) and business impact (cost savings, efficiency gains).

2

Show your product ownership by including a mini case study: describe a problem, your approach to discovery, the roadmap you built, and measurable outcomes.

3

Tailor your resume to emphasize GCP services (e.g., Vertex AI, Cloud Functions) and experience with Go or Python in microservices architectures.

4

Mention any experience with refurbished electronics, circular economy, or sustainability—it shows alignment with refurbed's mission.

5

Prepare a short portfolio or GitHub link demonstrating AI tooling (e.g., a chatbot, document summarizer, or internal automation) you've built.

✉️ What to Emphasize in Your Cover Letter

['Your passion for sustainability and circular economy, and how your AI skills can help refurbed scale its impact.', 'Specific examples of owning an AI product end-to-end, from ideation to deployment and iteration.', 'Your technical depth in back-end engineering and AI, especially with Go/Python and GCP.', 'Your collaborative approach to working with cross-functional stakeholders (e.g., operations, customer support) to identify high-impact AI opportunities.']

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🔍 Research Before Applying

To stand out, make sure you've researched:

  • → Read refurbed's blog and press releases to understand their growth, sustainability metrics, and company culture.
  • → Explore their tech stack and any public engineering talks or posts (e.g., on Medium or YouTube) to understand their engineering practices.
  • → Check their careers page for values and remote work policies—emphasize alignment with their 'work from anywhere' ethos.
  • → Understand the refurbished electronics market and challenges (e.g., quality grading, supply chain) to propose relevant AI applications.

💬 Prepare for These Interview Topics

Based on this role, you may be asked about:

1 Design a scalable back-end service for an internal AI assistant that retrieves information from multiple databases (e.g., inventory, customer tickets).
2 How would you evaluate the success of an internal AI tool? Define metrics and how you'd iterate based on feedback.
3 Walk through a production AI system you built: architecture, model selection, cost management, and lessons learned.
4 How do you handle ambiguous product requirements? Give an example of turning a vague problem into a clear roadmap.
5 Case study: refurbed wants to reduce manual effort in quality checks. How would you apply AI to automate parts of this process?
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⚠️ Common Mistakes to Avoid

  • Focusing only on AI models without demonstrating back-end engineering skills (scalability, reliability, cost).
  • Being vague about product ownership—avoid saying 'I contributed to' when you can say 'I led' with specific impact.
  • Ignoring the sustainability angle—refurbed's mission is core; failing to mention it shows lack of research.

📅 Application Timeline

This position is open until filled. However, we recommend applying as soon as possible as roles at mission-driven organizations tend to fill quickly.

Typical hiring timeline:

1

Application Review

1-2 weeks

2

Initial Screening

Phone call or written assessment

3

Interviews

1-2 rounds, usually virtual

✓

Offer

Congratulations!

Ready to Apply?

Good luck with your application to refurbed!

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