Software Developer - Applied AI

About Blue J

Blue J is the leading generative AI solution for tax professionals and one of Canada's fastest-growing AI companies. Headquartered in Toronto, we're a high-growth B2B SaaS company building industry-leading tax research software that helps accountants find accurate answers to complex tax questions with greater speed and confidence.

Backed by a $122M USD Series D funding round, we're scaling rapidly across North America and the UK while continuing to push the boundaries of what's possible with AI. By combining advanced technology with deep tax expertise, we empower tax professionals to work more efficiently, make better decisions, and deliver greater value to their clients.

We're now looking for a skilled Software Developer - Applied AI who thrives in a fast-paced environment and is passionate about shaping the future of AI-assisted tax research. Your work will directly contribute to enhancing our product and AI capabilities, ensuring our technology remains at the industry's leading edge.

About The Engineering Team

As a Software Developer - Applied AI you'll be joining a world-class engineering team capable of delivering award-winning products at industry leading levels of speed and quality.

We are looking for someone that shares our desire to make an impact and our belief that high quality-standards contribute to our ability to move fast. As relentless learners, we are constantly looking for ways to hone our craft and share our knowledge. We value software design fundamentals and the deep thinking required to ensure we’ll continue to move fast in the future. And fast we are - we ship many of our services through to production many times per day!

A Note on Location

We are excited to meet with qualified candidates and are grateful for everyone’s interest, this is a remote position that requires applicants to be within driving distance of Toronto for 1-2 in person meetings a quarter. All candidates must be eligible to work in Canada.

As a Software Developer - Applied AI on our Tax Intelligence team, you'll be joining a world-class engineering team building the agentic and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems that power Blue J's leading tax work platform.

We value software design fundamentals combined with data-driven experimentation that allows us to deliver value in quick increments. We deploy many of our services through to production many times per day. We pair that with an experimental mindset: we use data to find problems, form hypotheses, and test them in short, iterative feedback loops, both before and after we ship.

About the Role

We are looking for a seasoned software developer capable of delivering significant impact directly and indirectly through peer mentorship. You will be responsible for the design and implementation of critical parts of the agentic and RAG operating system behind our tax work platform.

We're looking for people with a range of profiles, and you may see yourself in one or more of these:

• Platform foundations: distributed systems, reliability, fault recovery, and strong data models and contracts
• Agentic and RAG platform: the retrieval, orchestration, and agent layers built on top of those foundations
• Product experience: full-stack React features that put those capabilities in the hands of tax professionals
• Evaluation and data-driven decisions: synthetic evals before release and mining of user data after release, turned into actionable insights that drive rapid iteration

What You'll be Doing

• Challenging yourself to design, plan, and deliver new agentic and RAG capabilities, platform foundations, and product features
• A substantial amount of coding, primarily in TypeScript, while leading other developers to help you deliver mission critical projects in an iterative and incremental fashion, regularly unlocking customer value along the way
• Using data to identify problems, forming hypotheses, and validating them through short, iterative feedback loops both before and after release
• Building and evolving a feedback loop that shows the impact of what we ship and guides where we focus next
• Coaching developers in the craft of writing beautiful code covered by well written automated tests while nurturing the long-term health of the systems we work on
• Giving impactful feedback in an empathetic manner to those around you
• Helping elevate our engineering standards, tools, and practices

Here is a sample of recent initiatives shipped by our team:

• Developing the agentic and RAG layers that deliver high-quality, precise research and draft deliverables while keeping latency and cost down
• Designing the data model and contracts for a two-way, interactive experience between the user and the platform
• Building durable execution and fault recovery into our distributed systems
• Extending our MCP server
• Building the evaluation tooling that tells us whether what we ship is working
• Delivering full-stack tax work features in React

Your Skills and Experience

• You have 8+ years of demonstrable software development experience with a minimum of 2 years experience working with TypeScript
• Hands-on experience building production systems involving LLM APIs, such as RAG pipelines or agentic workflows, using frameworks like LangChain, LangGraph, or Deep Agents
• Deep expertise in at least one of: distributed systems and reliability, agentic and RAG systems, experimentation, or evaluation and data tooling
• You've led significant initiatives involving multiple developers
• Strong written and verbal communication skills
• You approach your work with rigour and have an insatiable desire to learn

Technologies You Can Expect to Work With

• Languages & Frameworks: TypeScript / Node.js / Python / React / HTML / CSS
• AI & Agents: Proprietary and Open Source LLMs / LangChain / LangGraph / Deep Agents / MCP
• Data Infrastructure: PostgreSQL / NATS / Apache Kafka
• DevOps: Kubernetes / AWS / Docker / DataDog

A bit about us

• We’re well-funded and offer competitive base salaries and stock options. You’ll play a crucial role in our growth, and it’s important to us that you share in our long-term success.
• We are taking an exciting, highly anticipated new product into a virtually untapped market at a time when there is a huge amount of buzz around the type of work that we do. You’ll have the opportunity to work at our growing organization, and play a meaningful role in our expansion.
• We've got great leadership and you'll get to work with and learn from team leaders with a proven track record of success in the technology industry.
• We’ve got an amazing team. We’re mission-driven and motivated by success, but we’re friendly, we’re collaborative, and we care about each other. We’ve got all the start-up perks you’d expect, and are intentionally building a culture where you can pickleball if you want, feel safe to be yourself at work, and watch your career grow because your team has invested in you.
• We care about you. You’ll have a healthy work/life balance and colleagues who respect it. We’ve mindfully put together a great benefits package that covers you and your whole family.

The core values that define our culture

• We are customer-focused
• We put the team interest before self-interest
• We are pleasant and playful
• We are open to better ideas
• We move fast and fix things

What to Expect in the Interview Process

A human will review each application and get back to you as soon as possible.

Interview Process

• Screening call (30 min)
• Pair Coding Exercise (45 min)
• Past Experience Interview (45 min)
• System Design Exercise (45 min)
• Meet the Engineering Team (30 min)
• Final Interview with CEO (30 min)

We believe our strength is built on diversity of thought, and encourage candidates from all backgrounds and experiences to apply. We value inclusiveness and are an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate based on race, religion, colour, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.

We strive to create an inclusive and accessible hiring experience for all candidates. If you need any accommodations during the interview process, please let us know in your application. Our team is dedicated to providing the necessary support and making reasonable adjustments to ensure a smooth process for everyone.

How We Use AI in Our Hiring Process

• To ensure transparency, we want candidates to know that Blue J uses AI-enabled tools within our applicant tracking system to help organize applications and highlight profiles that match the key requirements for each role.
• AI does not make hiring decisions.
• Every application is reviewed by a member of our Talent team, and all decisions throughout the process are made by humans.
• We use these tools to support efficiency and consistency, not to replace human judgment and we’re committed to a fair, thoughtful, and equitable experience for every candidate