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Staff Software Engineer, Product

Directs AI coding agents to build and scale production systems in a multimodal AI lab, setting technical direction, making high-stakes tradeoffs, and co-owning product decisions. Requires 8+ years experience, deep judgment in systems or product, and proven AI tool usage for real outcomes.

230k – 360kPalo Alto, CAFullstack EngineeringHybrid8+ YOE

About the role

What You’ll Do

  • Direct AI coding agents to build production systems quickly, while maintaining discipline around system design, ownership, and real-world behavior.
  • Decide what to build and what not to build as implementation costs drop.
  • Set technical direction across engineering, including system boundaries, data models, ownership, and operational expectations.
  • Co-own product direction in partnership with design and research, defining both what we build and how we build it.
  • Make and stand behind hard tradeoffs between speed, reliability, complexity, and extensibility.
  • Shape architecture early, before decisions harden into constraints.
  • Own critical outcomes end-to-end, from problem framing to deployment and iteration.

Raise the Bar

  • Set the standard for technical depth, judgment, and production ownership.
  • Prevent avoidable complexity from entering the system as iteration speed increases.
  • Mentor engineers on how to use AI tools effectively without lowering engineering rigor.
  • Identify and eliminate recurring classes of design mistakes before they scale.

Multiply the Organization

  • Design systems and workflows that allow small teams to ship with outsized impact.
  • Attract exceptional engineers and help them grow into high-judgment technical leaders.
  • Increase team velocity without increasing operational and conceptual overhead.

Who You Are (Required)

  • 8+ years of experience building and shipping production software.
  • Led multiple non-trivial projects, owning technical direction and execution end-to-end.
  • Made high-stakes technical decisions that materially affected a system or product.
  • Fluent with AI coding tools and have used them to ship real functionality in production or substantial side projects.
  • Possess either: Strong technical depth (system design, distributed systems, security, infrastructure) or strong product intuition (user empathy, prioritization, taste in UX). Ideally both.

What Sets You Apart

  • Personally responsible for at least one clearly measurable, real-world success (e.g., product with 100k+ users, system serving millions of requests/day, open-source project with 10k+ stars).

Compensation

Base pay range: $230,000 – $360,000 per year.

Skills

Ai Coding ToolsSystem DesignDistributed SystemsSecurityInfrastructureProduct IntuitionArchitectureData ModelsMentoringAI Agents

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