{"id":1177145,"url":"https://alion.io/job/nextstepsystems-staff-software-engineer-ai-email-applications-artificial-intelligence-ai-required-work-from-home-2","title":"Staff Software Engineer, AI Email Applications, Artificial Intelligence (AI) Required - Work From Home","company":{"id":696176,"name":"Next Step Systems","domain":"nextstepsystems.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/nextstepsystems","size_band":"201-500","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"SmartRecruiters","truth_index":null},"role":"Backend","role_family":"Backend","seniority":"staff","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"remote","remote_scope":"stated_countries","remote_scope_basis":"board_field","remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["San Francisco, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":["US"],"hiring_countries_total":1,"salary":{"min":150000,"max":180000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":180000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Function Calling","optional":false},{"name":"LLM","optional":false},{"name":"Machine Learning","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-09-22T14:01:46Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-09-22","last_verified_at":"2026-11-02T14:39:48Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":41,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":41},"description":"Staff Software Engineer, AI Email Applications, Artificial Intelligence (AI) Required - Work From Home\nAs the Staff Software Engineer, AI Email Applications, you own the engineering layer that turns AI capability into a reliable product. You will shape the architecture across backend services, APIs, and client applications, while leading a small team of senior engineers. This is a hands-on leadership role. You stay close to the code, make critical architectural decisions, and ensure the system remains fast, reliable, and coherent as it scales. This position is 100% Remote.\nMUST BE WILLING TO TAKE A 60 MINUTE CODING ASSESSMENT.\nStaff Software Engineer Responsibilities:\n- Own the application engineering strategy and execution across backend, mobile, and desktop.\n- Design reliable systems for AI-powered workflows, including state, orchestration, tool use, retries, fallbacks, and failure handling.\n- Build the APIs and abstractions that connect Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems to real-world product experiences.\n- Lead a small, senior engineering team and raise the technical bar through design reviews, code reviews, and hands-on mentorship.\n- Make high-impact trade-offs across latency, reliability, cost, security, and user experience.\n- Establish strong production foundations: observability, monitoring, testing, and operational excellence.\n- Partner closely with Machine Learning (ML) leadership to turn model capabilities into robust, shippable product experiences.\n- Move quickly while keeping the architecture simple, maintainable, and ready to scale.\nStaff Software Engineer Outcomes:\n- Production systems are observable, monitored, and stable under real-world load.\n- Decisions consistently balance speed, cost, reliability, and user experience.\n- Features across backend, mobile, and desktop work smoothly and reliably.\n- Latency and reliability improve measurably over time.\n Staff Software Engineer Qualifications:\n- Artificial Intelligence (AI) experience required.\n- Significant experience leading application or product engineering for complex systems.\n- Strong hands-on background building and shipping backend systems used in production.\n- Experience building AI-powered products or systems that integrate with modern Machine Learning (ML)/Large Language Model (LLM) capabilities.\n- Strong technical judgment and the ability to make decisions with incomplete information.\n- Comfortable working across backend and client platforms, with deep expertise in at least one.\n- A strong bias toward ownership, shipping, and learning from real-world usage.\n- High standards for code quality, reliability, and engineering fundamentals.\nBenefits include medical insurance, Dental, Vision, Savings Plan Options, PTO, etc.\nKeywords: San Francisco CA Jobs, AI, Artificial Intelligence, AI Email Applications, APIs, Backend, Desktop, LLM, Large Language Model, ML, Machine Learning, Mobile, Staff Software Engineer, Work From Home, Remote, California Recruiters, IT Jobs, California Recruiting\nLooking to hire a Staff Software Engineer in San Francisco, CA or in other cities? Our IT recruiting agencies and staffing companies can help.\nWe help companies that are looking to hire Staff Software Engineers for jobs in San Francisco, California and in other cities too. Please contact our IT recruiting agencies and IT staffing companies today!\n Please check out all of our jobs at www.nextstepsystems.com.","description_format":"text","description_chars":3422,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[{"language":"English","level":"All levels","optional":false}]},"benefits":["Health insurance"],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"United States","iso":"US","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Artificial Intelligence","Machine Learning"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-09-24T12:03:02Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":29,"band":"fade","label":"Fading","p_open":1,"p_active":0.836,"p_room":0.35,"age_days":40,"expected_fill_days":20,"reasons":["conf:0","win:tail"],"computed_at":"2026-11-02T06:13:15Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":180000,"is_top_pay":false},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/nextstepsystems-staff-software-engineer-ai-email-applications-artificial-intelligence-ai-required-work-from-home-2","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/nextstepsystems-staff-software-engineer-ai-email-applications-artificial-intelligence-ai-required-work-from-home-2.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-11-02T18:27:55Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":25840,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-11-03T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":696176},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=696176"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fnextstepsystems-staff-software-engineer-ai-email-applications-artificial-intelligence-ai-required-work-from-home-2"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fnextstepsystems-staff-software-engineer-ai-email-applications-artificial-intelligence-ai-required-work-from-home-2"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fnextstepsystems-staff-software-engineer-ai-email-applications-artificial-intelligence-ai-required-work-from-home-2"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/nextstepsystems-staff-software-engineer-ai-email-applications-artificial-intelligence-ai-required-work-from-home-2\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fnextstepsystems-staff-software-engineer-ai-email-applications-artificial-intelligence-ai-required-work-from-home-2"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":1177145}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"nextstepsystems.com","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":1177145},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); https://alion.io/mcp with an Alion account has everything. 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