Staff / Principal Software Engineer, Applied AI

Early-stage, venture-backed AI company building AI-native enterprise software. The engineering team is small and highly technical, with broad product and technical ownership as the organization scales. Hybrid in San Francisco or New York City.

We’re looking for a senior technical leader who still wants to build.

You’ll work across applied AI, backend systems, data infrastructure, and product engineering to turn complex technical problems into reliable production software.

This is a hands-on role with broad ownership. You’ll help shape architecture, ship production systems, influence product direction, and raise the technical bar across the engineering team.

There is also meaningful opportunity for the role to grow into larger technical or engineering leadership responsibilities as the company scales.

• Staff-level or equivalent engineering experience
• Strong backend and distributed systems background
• Experience designing and building production software at scale
• Comfortable working across architecture and hands-on implementation
• Experience working with data-intensive systems
• Experience deploying AI or ML capabilities into production products
• Strong understanding of reliability, performance, and system correctness
• Comfortable operating in ambiguous, fast-moving environments
• Ability to take technical problems from early concept through production
• Strong technical communication and ability to influence other engineers

Nice to Have

• Experience with LLM-based or applied AI systems
• Experience with evaluation frameworks or production ML systems
• Experience with anomaly detection, fraud, abuse, security, or other complex decision systems
• Experience building products in an early-stage environment
• Experience mentoring or leading senior engineers

• Compensation up to $300K + equity
• Build applied AI systems that are core to the product
• Own meaningful technical problems from architecture through production
• Work directly with a small, experienced engineering team
• Influence both technical and product direction
• High autonomy and limited bureaucracy
• Opportunity to grow into broader engineering leadership