Staff Engineer

Role details

ABOUT THE ROLE This is a foundational engineering role at a seed-stage AI/people-data startup, sitting at the intersection of infrastructure, LLM-powered workflows, and large-scale data systems. You'll work directly with executive leadership to shape technical strategy and build the core agent platform from the ground up — with real ownership and outsized impact. WHAT YOU'LL DO - Design, build, and operate core APIs, LLM-powered workflows, web scraping systems, and large-scale knowledge graph architecture. - Architect and maintain production-grade systems capable of handling millions of API requests, with a strong focus on performance, cost efficiency, and reliability. - Own projects end-to-end — from ambiguous problem definition through deployment and iteration — shipping quickly without sacrificing system integrity. - Collaborate directly with executive leadership on technical decisions, roadmap priorities, and long-term architectural direction. - Contribute broadly across the stack, including developer documentation, internal tooling, technical tutorials, and experimental builds that stress-test the platform. WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR - 10+ years of professional software engineering experience with a strong track record of shipping to production at scale. - Hands-on experience with Linux servers in production environments. - Experience with agent orchestration, LLMs, or web scraping. - Familiarity with distributed systems, cloud infrastructure (AWS or GCP), microservices, and data pipelines. - Background at a high-growth tech company or early-stage startup; prior founding experience is a strong plus. - High agency, comfort with ambiguity, and a first-principles approach to problem-solving. - Currently based in San Francisco. COMPENSATION & BENEFITS Salary range: $250,000 – $300,000 USD annually. Visa sponsorship is not available. LOCATION On-site in San Francisco, CA, United States.