Staff Software Engineer, AI

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in California, +8 more states.

📋 Description

• Take charge of Technical Direction and Architecture.

• Establish the technical roadmap for AI systems, encompassing shared AI SDKs, guardrails, evaluation frameworks, feedback mechanisms, and agentic workflow infrastructure.

• Oversee the architecture and technical strategy for intricate backend and AI platform systems, guiding them from design to production.

• Lead the technical design for ambiguous, cross-functional projects by assessing tradeoffs, aligning stakeholders, and driving execution.

• Assess and choose technologies with an emphasis on those that can be effectively deployed and scaled sustainably.

• Build and Operate AI Systems.

• Write production-level code as a hands-on individual contributor—this role does not focus on delegating implementation tasks to others.

• Design and manage LLM-powered systems, including RAG pipelines, agentic workflows, evaluation infrastructure, guardrails, and model observability.

• Ensure the end-to-end reliability of AI systems from design through the delivery of structured outputs.

• Establish quality benchmarks, evaluation frameworks, and feedback loops to continuously enhance AI output accuracy and system reliability.

• Advocate for AI-Native Development.

• Promote and integrate AI-native development practices and tools (e.g., Cursor, Augment) to achieve notable productivity improvements across the team.

• Cultivate a culture of rapid iteration, high velocity, and quality—guiding the effective use of AI code generation.

• Provide strong, informed perspectives on maximizing AI-assisted development while ensuring reliability and correctness.

• Lead and Develop the Team.

• Mentor engineers, elevate the quality of technical decision-making, and assist the team in executing with consistency.

• Establish coding standards, review processes, and architectural documentation that can scale as the team expands.

• Help define what excellence looks like for a team that builds rapidly without compromising quality.

• Collaborate with recruiting to build and expand the team.

• Collaborate Cross-Functionally.

• Work closely with engineering managers, product, design, and QA to translate requirements into actionable technical plans.

• Actively participate in design reviews and roadmap discussions with a grounded, implementation-level perspective.

• Manage most cross-team conflicts and technical decisions independently.

⛳️ Requirements

• Over 7 years of backend and/or ML engineering experience, demonstrating a trajectory of increasing technical leadership, architectural responsibility, and mentorship.

• A portfolio showcasing shipped production systems—we will ask you to discuss specific technical decisions you made and code you wrote; this role is not suited for someone primarily directing others.

• Extensive expertise in Python, with strong capabilities in building production-grade backend services; familiarity with other server-side languages (Node/TS, Java) is advantageous.

• Practical experience in building and operating AI/LLM-powered systems—such as AI SDKs, RAG pipelines, evaluation frameworks, agentic workflows, or model observability—within real systems, not limited to experimentation.

• Proven experience leading technical design for intricate systems, including making architectural decisions, evaluating tradeoffs, and guiding implementation across multiple engineers or teams.

• Proficient in relational/NoSQL databases, including schema design, performance optimization, and data modeling.

• Experience in developing and managing cloud-native systems using AWS, Docker, Kubernetes, and infrastructure as code.

• Solid understanding of CI/CD, observability, reliability, and operational excellence within production environments.

• Ability to navigate ambiguity, deconstruct complex problems, and foster alignment across engineering, product, and design teams.

• Proven capability to enhance 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 success in embedding AI-driven practices to enhance team velocity and code quality.

• Competence in critically assessing AI-generated code and outputs, including recognizing failure modes, regressions, and edge cases.

🏝️ Benefits

• Health, dental, and vision insurance for you and your family.

• Life insurance coverage.

• Mental wellness support.

• Assistance for fertility and family growth.

• 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 stipend for professional development.