Senior Software Engineer AI

We are looking for seasoned engineers who have operated real production systems at scale-not just built prototypes or proof-of-concepts.

You have been on-call. You have debugged live production incidents under pressure. You deeply understand the difference between code that looks clean in a pull request and code that remains stable during peak production traffic, downstream failures, and operational stress.

This is not a research-only role or a greenfield experimentation position. This is a senior-to-principal-level engineering role focused on building, operating, and evolving critical backend and AI-powered systems in production environments. You will be expected to take ownership, drive engineering quality, and make sound technical decisions when systems fail-because eventually, they do.

What You’ll Do

• Production Ownership: Own and maintain production-grade Python services end-to-end, ensuring reliability, scalability, observability, and robust operational support.
• Cloud Architecture: Design, build, and operate Azure-native distributed systems using Azure Functions, Durable Functions, Event Grid, Service Bus, and supporting cloud infrastructure.
• AI & Orchestration: Build and maintain production-ready AI systems, including RAG pipelines, agentic workflows, and LLM orchestration frameworks (e.g., LangChain, AutoGen, Semantic Kernel).
• Observability & Triage: Diagnose and resolve live production issues using distributed tracing, log analytics, profilers, Azure Monitor, Application Insights, and related observability tooling.
• Engineering Standards: Establish and uphold strong engineering standards around code reviews, CI/CD, testing strategy, deployment safety, and incident post-mortem practices.
• Polyglot Flexibility: Contribute to secondary technology stacks, including C#, when needed. Deep expertise is not required, but practical working proficiency and transparency around strengths and limitations are expected.

Level: Senior (Minimum 8 years of relevant industry experience), Non-Negotiable Qualifications

• Experience: Minimum 8-10+ years of professional backend or distributed systems engineering experience, with a proven track record of hands-on ownership of systems running in production.
• Python Expertise: Strong Python engineering depth, including performance optimization, concurrency, debugging, and production reliability considerations.
• Azure Production Experience: Real-world Azure production experience-beyond certifications or lab environments. You have worked through issues such as cold-start latency, distributed failure modes, event ordering, scaling bottlenecks, and operational recovery.
• Incident Mastery: Ability to clearly explain a past production incident you owned, including the root cause, investigation approach, remediation steps, validation strategy, and long-term prevention measures.

Strong Additional Signals

• Production AI/RAG: Experience shipping and maintaining production LLM or RAG systems beyond initial launch, including handling prompt drift, latency optimization, evaluation degradation, and cost management.
• High-Concurrency Systems: Experience with distributed data systems, including queue-backed architectures, streaming systems, or large-scale SQL/NoSQL workloads.
• DevOps Culture: Ownership of CI/CD systems and deployment pipelines end-to-end, including rollback strategies, deployment safety, and operational automation.

Interview & Work Logistics

• Interview Process: Candidates must be open to participating in initial in-person interviews at our designated office location in the nearby city area.
• Work Location: Day-to-day employment is hybrid (2-3 days a week in-office) out of the Seattle office., * Visa Sponsorship: No visa sponsorship is available for this position. Applicants must have valid, unrestricted authorization to work in the United States.

• Experience Verification: All candidates will undergo comprehensive background and experience verification.
• Authenticity Over Buzzwords: We strongly value candidates who are honest about both their strengths and limitations. We are looking for genuine engineering depth, operational judgment, and production experience-not keyword-heavy résumés.

Compensation & Benefits

• Salary Range: $60 - $75 base salary per hr. * (Note: Final compensation will be determined based on chosen leveling, relevant skills, experience, and qualifications.)*
• Information regarding benefits, where applicable, will be provided during the interview process.