AI Software Engineer

DescriptionAs a Senior Software Engineer, you'll own the design, development, and operation of core backend and platform infrastructure — from Kubernetes clusters and cloud-native services to APIs and developer tooling. You'll partner closely with Product, AI, and Security teams to align architecture with business objectives, drive engineering excellence through code quality and CI/CD best practices, and serve as a mentor and multiplier for the broader engineering organization.Hybrid in Palo Alto, CA 94304Pay Rate - $70-$85/hr on W26-month Contract with possibility to extend or convert permFor a Large Tech CompanyRequired Experience & Skills6+ years of software engineering experience with a deep backend and infrastructure focus.Strong production programming skills in Python and/or Go — you ship code, not just scripts and configs.Deep, hands-on Kubernetes experience building and operating clusters (not just deploying to them).Proven experience designing and operating distributed systems in production environments.Cloud-native fluency across AWS and/or GCP — compute, storage, IAM, networking, and managed services.Experience with infrastructure-as-code (Terraform or similar) and CI/CD pipelines.Familiarity with applied AI tooling and agentic AI frameworks (e.g., Claude, LiteLLM, AI gateways) and the ability to build backend services that integrate with them.Strong system design and architectural judgment.Clear communicator who partners well across product, security, and AI teams.Nice-to-HavesExperience with observability stacks — Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, OpenTelemetry.Multi-cloud or hybrid infrastructure experience (AWS, GCP, on-prem).Familiarity with API gateways, AI gateways, and policy/authorization frameworks (ABAC, OPA).Service mesh or platform-as-a-service design experience.Track record of improving engineering productivity at scale.EducationBachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field preferred. Equivalent professional experience will be considered.If you're qualified and interested... Apply Today!