Staff Engineer

Who is Recruiting from Scratch:

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Staff Engineer

Location: San Francisco, CA
Company Stage of Funding: Seed Stage AI Infrastructure Startup ($3.7M Raised)
Office Type: On-site (San Francisco Financial District)
Salary: $220,000 - $380,000 Base
Equity: Competitive Equity (Direct Path to CTO)
Bonus: Competitive Total Compensation Package
Visa: Visa Sponsorship Available (Transfers Preferred) + Relocation Support
Company Description

Our client is building production-grade AI infrastructure for complex enterprise workflows that traditional automation tools cannot solve.

The platform transforms operational audit artifacts into autonomous agent orchestration systems that operate inside Fortune 5000 environments.

Founded in 2025 and currently scaling rapidly from approximately 10 employees toward 30 employees over the coming months.

Recently raised $3.7M from Workbench, Momento Ventures, and notable operators including the founder of DoorDash.

The company focuses on deploying production AI agents directly into enterprise systems including Salesforce, NetSuite, ServiceNow, and Workday.

Their platform automates complex operational workflows including financial operations, claims processing, compliance workflows, audit-grade governance, reconciliation, and enterprise process automation.

Engineering challenges involve agent orchestration, retrieval systems, evaluation frameworks, process mining infrastructure, distributed systems, governance frameworks, enterprise-scale deployments, and AI infrastructure.

This is a founding-level engineering opportunity with direct influence over technical architecture, engineering culture, hiring strategy, and long-term company direction.

The role offers a clear path toward CTO responsibilities and corresponding equity restructuring for exceptional candidates.

The company operates with startup urgency, shipping production systems weekly and prioritizing execution over bureaucracy.

Leadership is seeking a highly technical builder who can combine hands-on engineering, customer-facing leadership, and team building.
What You Will Do

• Own the technical architecture and long-term technical vision of the platform
• Design and build production-grade AI infrastructure and agent orchestration systems
• Architect scalable multi-agent workflows, retrieval pipelines, evaluation frameworks, and governance systems
• Build distributed systems capable of operating reliably inside enterprise environments
• Drive technical strategy and make critical build-versus-buy decisions
• Develop infrastructure that scales deployments from one-off implementations to repeatable platform products
• Design and implement process mining systems, diagnostic pipelines, and orchestration layers
• Build production AI systems involving LLMs, agents, tool use, retrieval, and enterprise integrations
• Partner directly with enterprise customers and translate business requirements into scalable technical solutions
• Present technical concepts and architectural decisions to executive stakeholders and customers
• Recruit, mentor, and lead engineers as the organization scales
• Establish engineering standards, code review processes, and technical best practices
• Drive engineering velocity and maintain a strong bias toward execution
• Bridge frontier AI research and production deployment realities
• Collaborate closely with leadership on company strategy and product direction
• Build systems supporting compliance-heavy and audit-sensitive enterprise workflows
• Help scale the engineering organization from early-stage startup to larger technical teams
• Lead through technical excellence while remaining deeply hands-on
• Influence company growth through both engineering execution and organizational leadership

Ideal Candidate Background

• 6+ years of software engineering experience
• At least 2 years operating at Staff, Principal, Founding Engineer, or equivalent senior technical leadership level
• Experience leading development of LLM-powered products or AI systems end-to-end
• Strong startup experience during periods of rapid growth
• Alternatively, ownership of major technical initiatives within highly respected technology companies
• Experience building enterprise-facing AI products
• Strong distributed systems and cloud infrastructure expertise
• Deep experience with Kubernetes and scalable infrastructure platforms
• Strong AI engineering experience beyond research and experimentation
• Experience building production agent systems, orchestration frameworks, or AI infrastructure
• Experience working directly with enterprise customers
• Strong engineering leadership and mentoring experience
• Strong communication and presentation skills
• Comfortable operating in highly ambiguous startup environments
• Proven recruiting and hiring experience
• Strong understanding of AI tooling, prompting, and AI-assisted development workflows
• Ability to balance technical leadership with hands-on execution
• Experience scaling systems and engineering organizations

Strong Signals

• Staff Engineer, Senior Staff Engineer, Principal Engineer, or Founding Engineer experience
• Experience at companies such as Glean, Writer, Moveworks, Hebbia, Adept, Cognition, Cohere, Lindy, 11x, or similar AI-native startups
• Built and shipped production-grade LLM-powered products
• Deep expertise in agent orchestration and multi-agent systems
• Experience deploying AI systems inside enterprise environments
• Strong Kubernetes and distributed systems background
• Experience building governance, evaluation, and observability frameworks for AI systems
• Previous startup leadership experience
• Proven ability to recruit and scale engineering teams
• Strong customer-facing technical experience
• Experience balancing technical depth with business impact
• History of owning company-critical technical initiatives
• Demonstrated ability to move quickly while maintaining engineering quality
• Strong infrastructure and platform engineering expertise
• Experience translating cutting-edge AI capabilities into reliable production systems
• Evidence of upward career progression
• High agency and entrepreneurial mindset

Compensation and Benefits

• Base salary: $220,000 - $380,000+
• Competitive equity package
• Direct path toward CTO-level responsibilities
• Potential equity restructuring for exceptional candidates
• Visa sponsorship available (transfers preferred)
• Relocation assistance available
• Backed by respected venture investors and experienced operators
• Opportunity to define technical architecture from the ground up
• High visibility across leadership and company strategy
• Significant influence over hiring and engineering culture
• Exposure to cutting-edge AI infrastructure challenges
• Opportunity to work directly with enterprise customers
• Fast-moving startup environment with substantial ownership
• Foundational role in shaping a rapidly growing company

Why Join

This is a rare opportunity to join an AI infrastructure startup at the earliest stage while still receiving significant compensation and ownership.

The company is building production AI systems for some of the most challenging enterprise workflows where reliability, governance, compliance, and scalability matter.

Unlike many AI startups focused on demos or copilots, the platform operates directly inside critical business systems and drives real operational outcomes.

The role combines architecture ownership, AI infrastructure, distributed systems, customer engagement, recruiting, and technical leadership.

Strong candidates have a clear path toward becoming the company's future CTO.

If you enjoy building production AI systems, designing scalable infrastructure, leading technical organizations, and shaping the future direction of a company, this role offers exceptional upside.