Staff Engineer
About the Role
This is a foundational engineering role at a seed-stage AI/people-data startup, sitting at the intersection of infrastructure, LLM-powered workflows, and large-scale data systems. You'll work directly with executive leadership to shape technical strategy and build the core agent platform from the ground up - with real ownership and outsized impact.
What You'll Do
Design, build, and operate core APIs, LLM-powered workflows, web scraping systems, and large-scale knowledge graph architecture.
Architect and maintain production-grade systems capable of handling millions of API requests, with a strong focus on performance, cost efficiency, and reliability.
Own projects end-to-end - from ambiguous problem definition through deployment and iteration - shipping quickly without sacrificing system integrity.
Collaborate directly with executive leadership on technical decisions, roadmap priorities, and long-term architectural direction.
Contribute broadly across the stack, including developer documentation, internal tooling, technical tutorials, and experimental builds that stress-test the platform.
What We're Looking For
10+ years of professional software engineering experience with a strong track record of shipping to production at scale.
Hands-on experience with Linux servers in production environments.
Experience with agent orchestration, LLMs, or web scraping.
Familiarity with distributed systems, cloud infrastructure (AWS or GCP), microservices, and data pipelines.
Background at a high-growth tech company or early-stage startup; prior founding experience is a strong plus.
High agency, comfort with ambiguity, and a first-principles approach to problem-solving.
Currently based in San Francisco.
Compensation & Benefits
Salary range: $250,000 - $300,000 USD annually. Visa sponsorship is not available.
Location
On-site in San Francisco, CA, United States.