Software Engineer - Next.js

Location: New York City or San Francisco, United States

Salary: $230,000–$340,000 annual base pay in San Francisco; compensation outside San Francisco may be adjusted based on employee location.

Company

Vercel builds agentic infrastructure and developer products including Next.js, v0, and AI SDK.

What you will do

• Write, review, debug, and ship production code for the Next.js framework and supporting systems.
• Lead complex technical initiatives from exploration and architecture through rollout and production follow-through.
• Set technical direction across rendering, caching, routing, build systems, runtime behavior, and developer tooling.
• Investigate performance regressions, production failures, reliability issues, and developer pain points.
• Coach engineers through pairing, design reviews, code reviews, technical feedback, and shared ownership.
• Partner with Product, Design, Infrastructure, Developer Experience, and other engineering teams while contributing to the open source community.

Requirements

• 8+ years of software engineering experience with strong hands-on production engineering skills.
• Experience leading engineers or small technical teams as a team lead, tech lead, staff engineer, engineering manager, or founder.
• Strong technical judgment across React, framework architecture, rendering, caching, routing, build tooling, and runtime behavior.
• Experience building developer products or infrastructure with high standards for quality, performance, stability, and usability.
• Ability to make architectural decisions, solve ambiguous problems from first principles, and communicate clearly in writing.
• Experience using AI tools in engineering workflows and informed opinions about agentic products for developers.

Nice to have

• Experience maintaining or contributing to major open source projects, especially in the React or Next.js ecosystem.
• Experience with compilers, bundlers, caching, rendering systems, or distributed infrastructure.
• Experience leading a small senior engineering team while making substantial individual contributions.
• Experience forming a team or technical direction from zero to one.
• Familiarity with the Next.js codebase.

Culture & Benefits

• Inclusive healthcare package and competitive compensation with possible equity and variable pay.
• Flexible time off.
• Learning and growth support, including mentorship and professional events.
• Equipment for the role and a work-from-home budget.
• Inclusive, high-trust, accountable engineering environment with a focus on open source and practical collaboration.

Hiring process

• Recruiter discussions provide further details about compensation and the total package.
• Applicants explain why they are a good fit for the Software Engineer - Next.js role.