Chief Engineer (Staff Engineer)

Job Description

Job Description

Chief Engineer (Staff Engineer)

Location: San Francisco, CA — On-site, 5 days per week
Employment Type: Full-Time
Base Salary: 330,000–375,000, based on qualifications and experience
Equity: Competitive equity

We are recruiting a Chief Engineer (Staff Engineer) for a profitable, venture-backed company building agentic AI technology for the financial services industry.

The company's AI platform powers customer interactions across voice, digital, and employee-assisted channels, helping financial institutions automate processes, improve customer experiences, and deliver measurable outcomes.

This is a highly hands-on technical leadership opportunity for an experienced engineer who wants to own an entire engineering domain, build alongside their team, and help shape the future of AI-powered financial services.

As a Chief Engineer, you will own an engineering domain end-to-end, combining deep technical execution with leadership and strategic ownership.

You will architect and build alongside your team, establish technical standards through your own work, and guide engineers and technical leads across your domain.

You will directly lead an engineering pod, collaborate closely with product leadership, and participate in technical and strategic decisions alongside company leadership.

This is the company's most senior technical track, emphasizing leadership through technical credibility rather than headcount management.

• Architecture and Development: Design and build the systems within your domain, remaining deeply involved in writing production code.
• Technical Excellence: Establish engineering standards, review code, and maintain quality and development velocity.
• Engineering Leadership: Guide and unblock engineers and technical leads while remaining an active individual contributor.
• Product Outcomes: Partner with product leadership to take ownership of what your domain delivers and its measurable impact.
• AI-Native Development: Leverage frontier AI models and development tools such as Claude Code and Cursor to improve engineering productivity and execution.

Depending on your domain, responsibilities may include:

• Core AI runtime and intelligence systems, including knowledge, retrieval, evaluation, and continuous improvement.
• AI agents operating across voice and chat, including AI-powered contact center capabilities.
• Integrations and computer-use technologies that allow AI agents to execute actions across financial systems.
• Systems that translate AI conversations into measurable business outcomes.
• Infrastructure supporting platform performance, reliability, and scalability.
• Shared data platforms and cross-customer fraud detection.
• Platforms for building, deploying, and managing AI agents.
• AI-native consumer banking experiences.

• 6+ years of software engineering experience, with experience operating at the Staff or Principal Engineer level.
• Experience working at a startup through a scaling stage, such as Series A–C, or having helped scale a product, platform, or engineering organization.
• Strong hands-on software engineering experience, including architecture, development, and production delivery.
• Strong engineering fundamentals, ideally with proficiency in Node.js, React, and Python .
• Experience owning a critical system, product, or technical domain end-to-end, from architecture through production.
• Demonstrated ability to lead technical execution while continuing to write production code.
• Experience independently conceptualizing, building, and delivering projects without extensive oversight.
• Ability to work on-site in San Francisco five days per week.

• Experience as a hands-on technical founder who has scaled a product.
• Experience building or leading zero-to-one products or platforms.
• Experience working with conversational AI, LLM agents, or agentic AI systems.
• Experience integrating AI development tools such as Claude Code or Cursor into engineering workflows.
• Strong experience building and scaling technology in high-growth startup environments.
• BS/MS in Computer Science or a related technical field.

• Base Salary: 330,000–375,000, based on qualifications and experience.
• Equity: Competitive equity.
• Location: San Francisco, California.
• Schedule: Full-time, on-site five days per week. No remote exceptions.
• Visa: Existing visa transfers, including H-1B transfers, may be considered. New visa sponsorship is not available.

This opportunity is ideal for an engineer who wants significant technical ownership, thrives in a fast-moving environment, and prefers building and shipping technology over managing from a distance.