Staff Software Engineer – AI

* Hiring on behalf of our clientTitle: Staff Software Engineer – AITime: Full-TimeLocation: San Francisco, California (5 days on-site, remote flexibility for exceptional candidates)Compensation: $330,000 - $375,000 + competitive equityThe CompanyOur client is a fast-growing agentic AI company transforming how banks and credit unions serve their customers. The company develops production-grade AI solutions that enable financial institutions to automate and improve customer interactions across voice, chat, employee assistance, banking operations, and other critical workflows. Backed by approximately $30 million in Series A funding, the business is already cash-flow positive, and its technology is deployed in production across more than 100 financial institutions.Role OverviewOur client is looking for an exceptional Chief Engineer operating at a Staff or Principal Engineer level to take end-to-end technical ownership of a major product or engineering domain. This represents the company's most senior individual-contributor technical track. You will remain deeply hands-on by architecting systems, writing production code, and setting the engineering standard, while providing technical direction to engineers within your domain. You will work closely with founders, engineering leadership, and your Domain Product Manager to determine both what gets built and how it gets built.Key Responsibilities• Own the architecture and technical direction of a major product or engineering domain.• Design, build, and deploy complex, production-grade systems while remaining deeply hands-on with code.• Take ambitious technical projects from initial concept through to production execution.• Make high-impact architectural decisions around scalability, reliability, and system design.• Establish technical standards and maintain a high engineering bar through code reviews and direct contributions.• Provide technical direction and mentorship to engineers and engineering leads within your domain without acting as a traditional people manager.• Partner closely with Domain Product Managers as an equal owner of product outcomes.• Build directly with frontier AI models and integrate modern AI development tooling such as Claude Code and Cursor into daily development workflows.• Design systems involving LLMs, agents, retrieval, evaluation, and AI-driven automation.• Drive high-impact technical initiatives across core AI runtimes, voice/conversational AI, LLM orchestration, knowledge systems, and banking integrations.Qualifications• Approximately 6 to 14 years of software engineering experience, currently operating at a Staff, Principal, or equivalent technical level.• Proven experience working within a Series A to C startup or scaling technology company, ideally with experience building systems from 0 to 1.• Strong engineering fundamentals with hands-on proficiency in Python, Node.js, and React.• Deep daily familiarity and hands-on experience using modern AI development tools and agentic workflows to increase engineering velocity.• Demonstrated track record of end-to-end ownership over complex distributed systems, APIs, and production architecture.• Strong first-principles thinking with the ability to turn ambiguous, complex technical problems into reliable production systems.• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical discipline (MS or PhD valued, though strong technical execution and ownership are paramount).• H-1B and visa transfer support is available; new visa sponsorship is not supported.What This Role Is NOTThis role is not a traditional engineering management position and is not intended for candidates looking to move away from writing production code into full-time people management. It is also not suited for engineers seeking highly structured environments with narrow responsibilities or those without hands-on experience using modern AI development tools.Compensation & Benefits• Base salary: $330,000 - $375,000 USD• Equity: Competitive equity package• Direct technical ownership over an entire product domain without sacrificing hands-on engineering time.• Direct collaboration with company founders and executive leadership.• Opportunity to build production-grade agentic AI deployed across real-world financial environments.