AI Staff Engineer

Job Description

Job Description

Sauce is a premier restaurant technology platform that helps businesses grow with our Commission-Free Delivery & Pickup structure and proprietary delivery optimization technology. We are serving a 105 billion dollar US local restaurant business. Headquartered in NYC and Tel-Aviv, Sauce wants restaurants to fulfill their highest potential, this means giving local establishments everything they need to connect directly with their customers. The Sauce team pools together decades of restaurant tech experience, along with seasoned tech, sales, marketing, product and operations executives who produce an industry-changing delivery system for successful local restaurants and chains.

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.

What You Bring:

• 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.
• 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.

 

Nice to have

• A meaningful open-source project people actually use (stars, forks, downloads, dependents).
• AI apps you launched solo that gained real traction.
• 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.

What We Offer:

• Strong & Competitive Compensation Package, Including Equity
• Company-Sponsored Insurance Package (Health, Dental, Vision, Mental Health)
• Paid Parental Leave
• Flexible Work Environment
• Responsible Paid Time Off Policy

Sauce is an equal opportunity workplace and an affirmative action employer. We welcome all qualified applicants regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex (including pregnancy and related conditions), national origin, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability (physical or mental), gender identity, gender expression, genetic information, veteran status, citizenship, immigration status, or any other classification, category or characteristic protected by applicable federal, state or local laws. We understand the importance of creating a more diverse and inclusive workplace and celebrate our employees for their differences.

We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses and identifying potential inconsistencies or verification signals in application materials based on available information. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.