Staff Software Engineer, AI

Role Overview

• Own Technical Direction and Architecture
• Set the technical direction for AI systems
• including shared AI SDKs, guardrails, evaluation frameworks, feedback systems, and agentic workflow infrastructure
• Own architecture and technical strategy for complex backend and AI platform systems, from design through production
• Lead technical design for ambiguous, cross-functional initiatives
• evaluating tradeoffs, aligning stakeholders, and driving implementation
• Evaluate and select technologies with a bias toward what ships well and scales sustainably
• Build and Operate AI Systems
• Write production code as a hands-on individual contributor
• this is not a role that delegates implementation to others
• Design and operate LLM-powered systems: RAG pipelines, agentic workflows, evaluation infrastructure, guardrails, and model observability
• Own end-to-end reliability of AI systems from design through structured output delivery
• Define quality benchmarks, evaluation frameworks, and feedback loops to continuously improve AI output accuracy and system reliability
• Champion AI-Native Development
• Champion and embed AI-native development practices and tools (e.g., Cursor, Augment) to achieve significant productivity gains across the team
• Foster a culture of rapid iteration, high velocity, and quality
• including guiding the effective use of AI code generation
• Bring strong, informed opinions about how to get the most from AI-assisted development while maintaining reliability and correctness
• Lead and Grow the Team
• Mentor engineers, raise the quality of technical decision-making, and help the team execute with consistency
• Establish coding standards, review practices, and architectural documentation that scale as the team grows
• Help define what "good" looks like for a team building at speed without sacrificing quality
• Partner with recruiting to build and grow the team
• Collaborate Cross-Functionally
• Work closely with engineering managers, product, design, and QA to translate requirements into executable technical plans
• Participate actively in design reviews and roadmap discussions with grounded, implementation-level perspective
• Handle most cross-team conflicts and technical decisions autonomously

Requirements

• 7+ years of backend and/or ML engineering experience with a trajectory of increasing technical leadership, architectural responsibility, and mentorship
• A portfolio of shipped production systems
• we will ask you to walk through specific technical decisions you personally made and code you personally wrote; this is not a role for someone whose primary contribution has been directing others
• Deep expertise in Python, with strong proficiency in building production-grade backend services; experience with other server-side languages (Node/TS, Java) a plus
• Production experience building and operating AI/LLM-powered systems — such as AI SDKs, RAG pipelines, evaluation frameworks, agentic workflows, or model observability — in real systems, not just experimentation
• Experience leading technical design for complex systems, including making architecture decisions, evaluating tradeoffs, and guiding implementation across multiple engineers or teams
• Experience with relational/NoSQL databases, including schema design, performance tuning, and data modeling
• Experience building and operating cloud-native systems using AWS, Docker, Kubernetes, and infrastructure as code
• Strong understanding of CI/CD, observability, reliability, and operational excellence in production environments
• Ability to work through ambiguity, break down complex problems, and drive alignment across engineering, product, and design
• Demonstrated ability to raise engineering quality through technical standards, design reviews, mentoring, and reusable platform patterns
• Hands-on experience with AI-native development tools (e.g., Cursor, Augment); demonstrated ability to embed AI-driven practices to accelerate team velocity and code quality
• Ability to critically evaluate AI-generated code and outputs, including identifying failure modes, regressions, and edge cases

Tech Stack

• AWS
• Cloud
• Docker
• Java
• Kubernetes
• Node.js
• NoSQL
• Python
• TypeScript

Benefits

• Health, dental, and vision care for you and your family
• Life insurance
• Mental wellness coverage
• Fertility and growing family support
• Flex Time Off in addition to company-paid holidays
• Paid family leave, medical leave, and bereavement leave policies
• Retirement saving plans
• Allowance to customize your work and technology setup at home
• Annual professional development stipend