Staff Software Engineer - AI-native automation

Company Description

Nexthink is the leader in digital employee experience management software. The company provides IT leaders with unprecedented insight allowing them to see, diagnose and fix issues at scale impacting employees anywhere, with any application or network, before employees notice the issue. As the first solution to allow IT to progress from reactive problem solving to proactive optimization, Nexthink enables its more than 1,300 customers to provide better digital experiences to more than 18 million employees. Dual headquartered in Lausanne, Switzerland and Boston, Massachusetts, Nexthink has 9 offices worldwide.

Job Description

Imagine building the automation platform that powers the future of IT - not just for human operators, but for AI agents themselves. At Nexthink, we're evolving Flow, our enterprise automation product, into something genuinely new: an AI-native platform where intelligent agents dynamically create and orchestrate the executions for enterprise scale and reliability.

This is a ground-floor opportunity to shape a product that doesn't fully exist yet. You'll be joining a small, high-impact team at the very beginning of this journey - working closely with leadership to explore, build, and define what next-generation IT automation looks like. If you thrive in ambiguity, love owning things end-to-end, and want your work to matter at scale, this role was built for you.

We're hiring Staff Software Engineer to join this initiative.

Responsibilities:

• Reimagining automation for the AI era - evolving Flow from a human-operated platform into one that AI agents can leverage to dynamically generate and execute workflows in secure, reliable, sandboxed environments.

• Building at scale - designing and shipping large-scale, distributed, high-throughput, real-time systems that serve enterprise customers with hundreds of thousands of endpoints.

• Shaping the product - working closely with Product Management and UX to define not just how to build things, but what is worth building and why. Your product instincts matter here as much as your technical skills.

• Integrating Gen AI into real product capabilities - using generative AI as a core building block, not a bolt-on, and measuring and iterating on its effectiveness.

• Driving technical direction - influencing architectural decisions, raising engineering standards, and mentoring teammates as a senior voice on the team.

• Navigating early-stage exploration - this is a greenfield initiative. Priorities will evolve, approaches will be debated, and the best ideas will win. You'll be expected to bring yours.

• Partnering across teams - working with Product, Infrastructure, Security, Cost Governance, and AI/ML teams to align engineering strategy with product and business objectives.

• Championing reliability and engineering excellence - driving observability, performance, resilience, and scalability across the stack.

• Acting as a mentor and multiplier - raising the technical bar, supporting other engineers, and helping the team grow through strong technical leadership and collaboration.

Qualifications

• Strong product engineering background - you've built products used at scale, you understand the why behind design decisions, and you care deeply about the value your work delivers to customers.

• Gen AI in production - you've used generative AI to build real product features, and you can speak to how you evaluated, measured, and iterated on those systems.

• Experience with large-scale distributed systems - real-time requirements, high throughput, fault tolerance. You've been there and done it.

• 10+ years of backend engineering experience, with 3+ years in Staff or Principal-level roles. Proven success designing and scaling backend systems for tens of millions of users or high-throughput real-time systems.

• Expert in Java (17+), with strong background in distributed systems, concurrency, and high availability.

• Hands-on expertise in cloud-native architectures - AWS or equivalent, Kubernetes/ECS, containerized deployments, and large-scale database systems.

• Deep understanding of API design, streaming data, and event-driven systems.

• Exceptional communication skills - able to influence cross-functional teams and leadership with technical direction.

• Mentorship and team elevation - a strong track record of mentoring engineers, raising the technical bar, and helping teams grow through technical guidance and collaboration.

• Engineering excellence - CI/CD pipelines, observability, and a genuine commitment to quality are part of how you work, not afterthoughts.

Nice-to-Haves

• Advanced AI/ML experience - model fine-tuning, training.

• B2B enterprise product experience.

The Mindset We're Looking For

More than any single technology, we're looking for someone who:

• Embraces ambiguity and can figure things out without waiting for perfect clarity.

• Takes end-to-end ownership - you don't stop at your boundary if something needs doing.

• Thinks like a product engineer, not just a feature implementer.

• Brings leadership energy - you raise the bar around you, share opinions on technical direction, and help others grow.

Additional Information

We are the pioneers and trailblazers of a global IT Market Category (DEX) that is shaping the future of how the world works, giving our customers' IT Teams total digital visibility across their enterprise. Our innovative solutions integrate real-time analytics, automation, and employee feedback across all endpoints. This enables our IT teams to solve complex technical challenges, create ever more productive workplaces, and deliver happy, satisfied employees in the digital workplace.

With over 1000 employees across 5 continents, Nexthink operates as One Team, connecting, collaborating and innovating to continuously grow. We call our employees 'Nexthinkers' and our commitment to diversity, inclusion, and equity is second to none. We currently have over 75 nationalities working with us, from all cultures and backgrounds, speaking many different languages.

If you are looking for a change and like a nice atmosphere, lots of challenges, and having fun while working, this is a great opportunity for you! Check what we offer:

• Permanent Contract and a competitive compensation package.
• Beautiful office with a view of Lake Geneva, conveniently located next to the Prilly-Malley train station
• Hybrid work model balancing office and remote work, with a structured approach for new hires to foster connections and onboarding.
• Flexible Hours and unlimited vacation (employees have unlimited paid time off on top of the 25 days of holidays we offer) plus 3 company-paid volunteer days.
• Free access to a fitness centre inside the building.
• Reimbursement of the half-fare travel card for public transport.
• Reimbursement up to 50% of the cost of French classes.
• Fresh fruit, cookies, and soft drinks as well.
• Regular company and team events like Voluntary Days, Pizza talks, Team Building activities, hosting Meetups at the office and more!
• Bonuses for referring successful hires after three months of continuous employment.
• We offer a relocation package to people who are coming from another country.

Please note that not all the benefits listed above are available for temporary, contract, and internship roles. To ensure you have the most up-to-date information, we recommend checking with your Recruitment Partner.