Staff Engineer - Kairos

About Kairos:

Kairos builds AI agents for manufacturing production scheduling. Material delays, shifting demand and supplier issues constantly disrupt production schedules. ERP and MRP systems record these events after they happen, but they don’t catch them early or limit the damage. Kairos agents watch production, inventory and demand signals, map which orders, POs and equipment are affected, and give planners recovery options that reflect the business’s priorities. Planners still make the final call. Kairos works alongside the tools manufacturers already use, so customers don’t have to replace anything. It’s built for high-mix, make-to-order and engineer-to-order manufacturers.

The role:

As a Staff Engineer, you’ll be one of the first engineering hires at Kairos and will help set the technical foundation the company builds on for years. You’ll work across the whole stack: frontend, backend, data and infrastructure. You’ll design and ship the systems that put our scheduling agents in front of real planners.

This is a senior individual contributor role. You’ll lead through technical ownership and hands-on delivery rather than by managing a team. You’ll take an ambiguous business problem, work out the right technical solution and see it through to production without waiting for a detailed ticket. You’ll work agent-first: AI coding agents are part of how you build every day, so one person can cover the ground of a team.

What you’ll own:

• Foundational architecture. Make the early decisions on system design, data models, service boundaries and conventions that will hold up as the amount of AI-generated code grows over the next year.
• Full-stack product delivery. Build features end to end, from the React frontend planners use every day, through Python/FastAPI services, to the data layer behind them.
• Data and integrations. Connect to customers’ ERP, MRP and production data, build reliable pipelines into our Databricks warehouse, and make sure our agents work from data planners can trust.
• Infrastructure and reliability. Help lead our cloud migration from Azure to GCP, and own deployment, observability and uptime for systems customers run their plants on.

How we work:

• Problem first, then code. Start from the business problem and the planner’s day, not from the ticket.
• Get the foundation right. Decisions we make now will shape the company for years, so we take architecture seriously and keep it simple.
• Planners stay in control. We build transparent, traceable recommendations, not black-box optimization.
• Agents write the code; engineers own it. You use AI to build faster, and you’re accountable for what ships.
• One platform, many customers. Differences between customers live in configuration, not code branches.
• Light everywhere, deep where it matters. We’re early. Everyone works across the stack and goes deep when the product needs it.

What you bring:

• 8+ years of hands-on software engineering experience, including senior or staff-level ownership of systems from design through production at scale.
• Strong Python, with production experience building APIs (FastAPI preferred).
• Solid frontend skills in React. Next.js experience is a plus.
• Hands-on cloud infrastructure experience on GCP, Azure or AWS. Experience with a cloud migration is a strong plus.
• Experience building data pipelines and working with a modern data platform such as Databricks.
• An agent-first way of working. You already hand implementation, tests and refactors to AI coding agents, check what they produce, and can show how that lets you do the work of several people.
• Autonomous problem solving. You can turn a vague business problem into a working system design and explain the trade-offs to engineers and non-engineers.
• Judgment to pick the simple solution, push back on the wrong one, and make architecture decisions others can build on.

Nice to have:

• Experience at an early-stage or 0-to-1 company; manufacturing, supply chain, ERP/MRP or scheduling systems; building LLM or agent-powered products.

What we offer:

• A founding-level seat shaping the engineering culture and technical foundation, with a direct line to the founders on product and company strategy.
• Production ownership from day one: your code runs live in real manufacturing operations.
• A remote, distributed team centered in the Northeast. Some travel may be required.
• Competitive compensation and meaningful early-stage equity.
• Healthcare, standard benefits and flexible PTO.

Location: Remote (Northeast US preferred: