About YASO
YASO is the operating system for international brands in China, built by a team of China experts, technologists, and startup operators. We provide a plug-and-play solution that manages the full cross-border ecommerce and social commerce stack - from store operations and pricing to influencer partnerships and logistics - all powered by our proprietary technology.
We give brands full visibility across every performance layer, including traffic, conversion, revenue, influencer ROI, content, and stock. For the first time, brands can monitor and manage their China business in real time, with data that is transparent, measurable, and actionable.
By replacing opaque legacy models with a unified, data-driven system, YASO enables international brands to take back control of their growth in China.
Following our Series A fundraise, we are expanding our global team across London, Shanghai, and beyond to shape the future of cross-border retail.
The Role
Work with our Product Manager and engineering team to build the customer-facing platform features and internal tools that enable enterprise customers to use YASO self-service. You'll ship data integrations, operational tooling, and standalone product capabilities that will enable us to scale our customer base 10x.
You report to our Founder (James, based in London), with daily collaboration with your squad, PM and YASO's ops team in Shanghai. You'll work with our international teams in Europe and Shanghai with regular opportunities for in-person collaboration across the team.
Within 60 days, you've shipped at least one feature that our ops team or customers use weekly that you've owned end to end.
You Will
Build end-to-end features from database schema to UI that solve real operational bottlenecks and deliver measurable impact for our team and customers
Design and implement APIs that power both internal tools and customer-facing platform capabilities, ensuring they're secure, scalable, and maintainable
Translate product requirements into technical solutions. Work with our Product Manager to shape specs, assess feasibility, and flag architectural concerns before they become problems
Own your code in production. Deploy, monitor, debug performance issues, and maintain the systems you build
Collaborate across timezones. Daily async work with our Shanghai engineering team, building on shared data infrastructure and contributing to our unified codebase
Participate in EU-based on-call rotation to ensure system reliability
Shape our engineering culture through thorough code reviews, documentation, and sharing best practices with the team
Drive our roadmap, providing technical input on our strategy and product roadmapRequirements
Fluent English language speaker.Experience:
5-8 years as a full-stack engineer building production web applications
2+ years at early-stage startups (seed to Series B)
Led technical delivery of 2+ substantial features end-to-end (0→production), including architecture decisionsTechnical Skills:
Expert-level TypeScript/JavaScript and modern frameworks (Next.js, React, or equivalent)
Strong database skills (Postgres, MySQL) - can design schemas, optimize complex queries, debug performance issues independently
Solid DevOps foundation: CI/CD, Docker, cloud infrastructure (AWS/GCP/similar), comfortable troubleshooting production issues
Write code that requires minimal review - colleagues trust your technical judgmentProduct & Architecture:
Experience collaborating with Product Managers, shaping requirements and pushing back when needed
Can take ambiguous problems, propose solutions, and execute without constant oversight
Comfortable making architectural trade-offs (build vs. buy, scale now vs. later)
Experience mentoring junior engineers through code review and pairingWorking Style:
Highly independent: You unblock yourself and know when to escalate
Pragmatic about technical debt and scope
Product-minded: You challenge requirements that don't make business sense
Thrive in startup ambiguity and rapid iteration
AI-augmented: You can get the most out of LLM assistantsBonus:
Experience building B2B SaaS products
Familiarity with LLM APIs (OpenAI/Anthropic) and vector databases
Any Mandarin Chinese language skillsOur Process
Initial screen (30 min) - Call with our Founder James
Technical interview (90 min)
Reference checks - We'll contact 2 references
Call with a second YASO founderBenefits
The opportunity to shape the marketing engine of a fast-growing Series A company redefining cross-border commerce.
A collaborative, high-performance environment spanning London, Shanghai, and beyond.
Competitive salary, performance-linked incentives, and flexible working arrangements.
Direct exposure to senior leadership, global brand partners, and leading consumer platforms