Best suited to candidates with hands-on experience in building customer-specific tools and a strong understanding of manufacturing or inventory management, working in a remote-first, AI-first SaaS environment.
Derived from job-description analysis by Serendipath's career intelligence engine.
Original posting from Katana via Ashby
ABOUT KATANA
Katana is a B2B SaaS company that builds inventory and manufacturing software for 1,500+ businesses that make and sell physical products around the world.
As we move upmarket with our Advantage plan (a plan personalized around each customer's business), more customers come to us with a "job to be done" that our core product doesn't cover on its own: automatically moving stock between warehouses so no location runs out, a reporting flow nobody else needs, or an integration with the one tool their factory floor runs on. Those deals are landing and growing, and one senior Solution Engineer can't build for all of them. That's where you come in.
Most builder roles put you close to the code or close to the customer's problem. This one gives you both.
- You build, not just advise. This is not a sales engineer role. You take a real customer problem, design the solution, build it, and keep it running
- You stay close to customer problems. You understand their business, ask questions that make people think, and explain the value of what you built in their terms, not in terms of the code
- You build AI-first. You plan, prompt, then review and validate what the tools produce. AI is how we work every day, not a side experiment
- You own it from the first scope to go-live and beyond. Whoever builds it estimates it, and owns it after go-live
This isn't a role for someone who wants a finished spec. It's for someone who wants to solve real business problems with working tools, and to be judged on whether the customer's problem actually went away.
ABOUT THE ROLE
You'll join the Custom Solutions team in Product Engineering and build solutions that extend Katana for one customer, or for a few customers with the same need. You'll work alongside our senior Solution Engineer, who calibrates your estimates and supports your scoping.
You build on top of Katana, not in the core product. You connect Katana to the tools a customer already uses, and build the small apps, automations, and reports they need. That boundary is deliberate: it lets you move fast and own your work fully, safely.
How you work. You work mostly through our Product Manager, who owns the customer's need and priority, and you join customer sessions on an as-needed basis. An engineer reviews your solution designs, and you build things that are easy to maintain, with our monitoring tools behind you.
WHAT YOU'LL DO
Frame the problem
- Take a customer problem from the PM, whether it affects one customer or tens of them
- Find out why the customer is asking, not just what they're asking for
- Scope the most viable solution
Design and build the solution
- Lead the solution design and review it with an engineer
- Build AI-first on our REST API and miniapps platform: integrations, miniapps, automations, and data flows
- Right-size every solution: build for specific customer needs, not a universal platform for a one-customer need
Take it live and keep it running
- Put what you build live, keep an eye on it, and maintain it, like the whole team does
- Handle keys, credentials, and customer data safely across many client projects
- Fix what breaks, and learn from it so it doesn't break again
Make the work better
- Demo what you built to customers and teammates, in the customer's terms
- Spot repeated needs and help turn one-off builds into reusable tools over time
- Give feedback on the miniapps platform you use every day
WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE
- By week 4: You've shipped a small solution for a real customer. You think in the customer's domain, and you've proposed one improvement to how we run Advantage builds
- By month 2: You have implemented one standard build end to end, with your estimate calibrated by our senior Solution Engineer
- By month 4: You have implemented multiple builds end to end, with senior support on scoping. Your solutions are monitored and running well
Your first weeks. You're onboarded to our product and its domain, and tutored on the platforms and tooling you'll use. You join customer calls and team calls to learn first-hand, and an assigned mentor teaches you and answers your questions. We also keep asking for your feedback on our processes, so you have a say in how we improve them.
WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR
What we care about most is your experience with customers: finding out what their real problems are, communicating clearly with them along the way, and solving those problems. Coding isn't required. Tools are just the means, whether you used Make.com, n8n, Lovable, AI tools like Claude Code, or an internal tool. There's no coding test in our process, but we expect the person to have hands-on experience building with AI.
How you think (must-have)
- Product-minded builder. You start from the customer's problem and the business outcome, not from the technology
- You run real discovery. You find out why the customer is asking, and scope the most viable solution together with PMs and stakeholders
- Self-starter who handles ambiguity. You turn a vague need into a clear plan, and you share ideas without waiting to be asked
- You learn the product deeply. You want to become the Katana and manufacturing expert your customers rely on
What you can do (must-have)
- Direct customer contact. You're comfortable talking to end users and getting to the root of their problems. You've worked in support, support engineering, customer success, product, or sales, or maker with your own users
- Proven builder. You've built tools, workflows, or small apps that you or others use, with or without code. You understand how they work and what happens when a step fails. Evidence beats years: show us something you've built that makes you proud
- AI-first, and systematic about it. You plan, prompt, and test what the tools produce, and you understand what you've built. You've solved real problems with workflow builders or AI coding tools, such as Make.com, n8n, Claude Code, Codex, or Lovable
- You explain what you built and why it matters, to technical and non-technical people alike
- Fluent English. It's our working language, and you'll often work with native English speakers
Strongly preferred, not required
- You can code, have built or used APIs, and understand system design
- A background in ERP, operations, or ecommerce
- Cloud basics
We'll teach you
- The Katana product and data model
- Our miniapps platform
WAYS OF WORKING
- High ownership. You drive your projects from idea to production and after go-live
- You speak up early when you're stuck, rather than going quiet
- You build for value, not for the technical challenge. What matters to you is whether the customer's problem went away
- Flexible hours. Our team works across many time zones, so you choose your working times as long as they align with the team. Customer calls sometimes happen in the evening, and you can plan your day around them, for example by starting later. We don't expect overtime
- Travel. We'd like you to visit our Tallinn office about once a quarter, and Katana covers your office visits
WHAT WE OFFER
- An annual gross salary of €37,000–€51,000, plus employee stock options
- A clear growth path as a solutions builder
- Real impact at a global growth company, with work customers see and use
- A talented, highly committed, global team across engineering, product, sales, and beyond, distributed and hybrid, with one office in Tallinn, Estonia
- Time off that's genuinely encouraged: statutory annual leave aligned with local requirements, with a global minimum of 4 weeks, 3 paid health days annually, and your birthday off
- A fully paid 1-month sabbatical and a EUR 1,000 travel budget after every four years at Katana
- Home office stipend
- Health and wellness stipend
- Modern tools and tech, including AI-enabled tools that help you work smarter and stay focused on high-impact work
Automated screening and AI disclosure. We use automated tools, including AI, to help review applications and filter candidates. Final decisions are always made by people. If you're in a place that requires it, we'll ask your consent. Ask us anytime about what this means.
Source: Katana careers (Ashby)