Lead Software Engineer

Commercial Programming Systems, Inc. (CPS) is an Information Technology consulting and staffing company offering a broad range of services aimed at helping our clients deliver high-quality, cost-effective systems.We are currently searching for a Lead Software Engineerto support our client located in the Palo Alto, CA area for a full time hire position. This is an onsite position, and the selected person will need to work onsite.About the roleEarly-stage funded AI startup hiring our first engineer. Reporting to the founders, you'll own the technical foundation of our product, the data and model pipelines, cloud infrastructure, developer tooling, and the application layer built on top.This is a high-ownership role for someone who wants to shape both the codebase and the engineering culture of a small, ambitious team.What you'll do:Build the pipelines that ingest, process, and transform data for our modelsStand up and operate cloud infrastructure across compute, storage, networking, and deploymentBuild the orchestration layer connecting ingestion, training, inference, evaluation, and servingEstablish CI/CD, monitoring, logging, and alerting from the ground upContribute to the application layer APIs, services, and user-facing surfaces on top of the platformMake foundational architectural decisions and partner with the founders on technical strategyWhat we're looking for:Strong Python and SQL fundamentalsHands-on experience building production data pipelines (Airflow, Dagster, Prefect, or similar)Working proficiency with AWS, GCP, or Azure, including provisioning, IAM, and networkingExperience with Docker and Kubernetes (or a managed equivalent)Familiarity with infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, Pulumi, or CDK)Backend API design (REST, GraphQL, or gRPC) and working knowledge of authRelational database design and query optimization (Postgres or similar)Proficient with AI developer tools like Claude Code, Cursor, or GitHub CopilotA track record of operating across the stack and debugging complex systemsSound judgment on engineering trade-offsYou don't need a decade of experience — what matters is a first-principles understanding of the stack and a history of building end-to-end systems.Nice to have:Real-time data streaming systems (Kafka, Pub/Sub, Kinesis, Flink, or similar)Open-source contributionsExperience with health or clinical dataFull-stack product experience, including shipping user-facing web applicationsWhat we offerEarly-stage equity and meaningful ownership of the technical roadmapCompetitive base salaryA small, high-trust team where your work directly shapes the productThe opportunity to build it the right way, from day oneCommercial Programming Systems, Inc. (CPS) is an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer. CPS does not permit or condone any form of discrimination or harassment based on race, color, religion, national origin, gender, disability, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, or gender identity by the Company’s managers, associates, or vendors.