Staff Software Engineer

OpenMined is a nonprofit on a mission to build the public network for the world's non-public data. The Staff Software Engineer will lead the Network Sourced AI squad, responsible for developing core products that enable AI to query data while maintaining its source and attribution.

Responsibilities:

• Own the NSAI squad technical architecture end to end — align design, engineering, and deployment across stack to deliver reliable technical capabilities and user experience from current implementation through product roadmap evolution
• Drive production readiness through deployment monitoring, error handling, graceful degradation, and operational runbooks
• Be a force multiplier by establishing, demonstrating, and mentoring the team to establish norms around engineering best practices (including system design for modularity, security, reliability, & scalability), code quality, and delivery to production
• Collaborate on core technology stack strategy through architectural review and identification of NSAI components that should become shared organizational primitives and defining standard interfaces that prevent tight coupling
• Partner with product lead to develop and execute on realistic roadmaps that balance what is desired with what is feasible, scalable, and architecturally sounds
• Own the delivery of engineering's quarterly goals, ensuring consistent, high-impact delivery while effectively managing resources
• Own team output, delivery, and success (productivity, timeliness, morale) through appropriately matching team members and work to properly balance interest, learning opportunities, capacity, and capability
• Champion high-quality software delivery through the establishment of robust tools, processes, & methodologies, and by providing hands-on technical leadership via individual development contributions and code reviews
• Create technical documentation and processes that support high velocity and knowledge transfer
• Manage a team of 2-4 engineers as a people leader, performing 1:1s, providing technical and professional feedback, creating professional development plans, and performing performance reviews

Requirements:

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience with a track record of personally building, shipping, and operating production systems at meaningful scale
• Strong Python proficiency — FastAPI, async patterns, Docker orchestration
• Distributed systems and API design experience including design & evolution of interfaces consumed by multiple independent teams
• Practical RAG and information retrieval experience with vector databases, retrieval pipelines, embedding strategies, and aggregation
• Demonstration of technical leadership through the introduction of engineering quality practices to one or more teams
• Comfort with ambiguity and resource constraints
• Async-fluent with strong written communication and capacity to build high-trust working relationships across 6hr+ time zone spread
• Cross-functional collaboration & communication to facilitate and improve understanding/context sharing between engineers and non-engineering/non-technical stakeholders
• Located within ET +/- 1 to enable rapid team-oriented communication, learning, and feedback cycles as well as facilitate engagement with remainder of OpenMined engineering team, globally
• Vue 3 / TypeScript, Rust / Tauri, or cross-platform desktop app experience extremely beneficial
• Networking/P2P application experience beneficial