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# Staff Software Engineer

- **Company:** Sauce LLC
- **Location:** Mundelein, IL, United States
- **Experience:** Experienced
- **Contract:** Permanent contract
- **Skills:** Artificial Intelligence, Databases, Python (Programming Language), Open Source Technology, OpenAI, Software Engineering, Systems Integration, TypeScript, Retrieval-Augmented Generation, Large Language Models, Backend, Front End Software Development, Software Coding
- **Published:** October 23, 2026
- **Apply:** https://www.thejobnetwork.com/job/5e0b7a13-2633-4cad-b5eb-72a329063d04/staff-software-engineer

## About the Role

* Strong full-stack ability: you can own a feature from database to UI without waiting on anyone (TypeScript / Python and a modern web stack).
 * At least 8 years of professional software engineering experience, with 3+ years building and shipping production full-stack applications.
 * A builder first: a public trail - open-source repos, side projects, demos, or products with real users - that shows what you ship when no one's telling you what to do.
 * AI-first by default: you reach for models to solve problems, keep up with the ecosystem without being told to, and know what works in production vs. what's just a nice demo.
 * Product-minded: you care about the user and the outcome, not just the diff - you can decide what to build, not only how.
 * Fast: you compress weeks into days, shipping and iterating instead of polishing in private.
 * Comfortable with ambiguity and a small, fast-moving team., * Experience with agent/eval frameworks, vector stores, and production LLM tooling.
 * A history of being early - building in a space before it was obvious.
 * Contributions to leading AI or developer-tool projects.
 * Experience in marketplaces, logistics/delivery, or restaurant/local-commerce tech.

## Description

About The Role: We're looking for a rare kind of engineer: someone who thinks AI-first, ships end-to-end, and moves at a pace that makes a small team feel like a large one. You won't be handed tickets - you'll be handed problems, often loosely defined, and trusted to decide what to build, build it, and get it in front of real restaurants and their customers fast.
This is a high-ownership, founding-level role on our growing NYC team. You'll shape how AI shows up across the Sauce platform - from delivery optimization to the tools our restaurants and operators use every day. If you're the kind of person who saw a new model launch and shipped a working product that weekend, we want to talk. What You'll Do:

 * Take ambiguous product ideas from zero to shipped - design, build, deploy, and iterate, largely on your own.
 * Build AI-native features (agents, RAG, tool-use, structured outputs, evals) as core product, not bolted-on demos.
 * Own the full stack: frontend, backend, data, model integration, and the glue in between.
 * Stand up the feedback loops - evals, telemetry, fast iteration - that make AI products reliable in production.
 * Make pragmatic build-vs-buy calls and keep the team on the frontier of what models can do.
 * Partner closely with product and operations to turn real restaurant problems into shipped solutions.
 * Raise the bar on velocity and product taste for everyone around you., * Hands-on experience building with LLM APIs and SDKs (OpenAI, Anthropic, or open models) - writing code against the models, not wiring up no-code/automation tools.