Senior, Applied AI Engineer

Headstart AI

Toronto

On-site

CAD 232,737 - 284,456

Full time

14 days+

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Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary

Equity compensation

401k match

Job summary

A tech company in Toronto seeks a Senior Software Engineer to drive the full development lifecycle, prototype rapidly, and build accessible full-stack products. The ideal candidate has 5+ years of experience and a strong interest in AI. This role offers a competitive salary of $185,000 plus equity and benefits.

Qualifications

5+ years of professional software engineering experience.
Strong interest in leveraging AI in the development lifecycle.
Experience designing distributed systems, APIs, data pipelines.

Responsibilities

Own and drive the full development lifecycle from ideation to production.
Prototype while ensuring long-term reliability, maintainability, and security.
Build intuitive, accessible full-stack products.

Skills

Professional software engineering experience

Interest in leveraging AI

Collaboration in a fast-paced environment

Full-stack systems ownership

Experience with distributed systems

Tools

Python

FastAPI

Node.js

Postgres

MySQL

React

Next.js

Job description

Join to apply for the Senior Software Engineer role at Headstart AI

This range is provided by Headstart AI. Your actual pay will be based on your skills and experience — talk with your recruiter to learn more.

Base pay range

$185,000.00/yr - $185,000.00/yr

About The Company

At Headstart our mission is to bring companies into the age of intelligence and automate software development. We are the team behind the coding agent Friday and are building frontier applied AI technologies including agent orchestration, memory, and more.

We specialize in solving problems with the latest LLM capabilities that deliver measurable outcomes and breakthrough results for organizations in many different industries. As the technology continues to advance at an unprecedented rate, we provide companies with custom software solutions and a suite of tools to stay ahead of the intelligence curve.

About The Team

We are a lean, high-velocity team that ships breakthrough AI capabilities at startup speed. We work directly with our users, iterate rapidly, and measure success by the real-world impact we create for our clients. We believe that simplicity and engineering fundamentals are more important than ever in an AI driven world.

About The Role

Own and drive the full development lifecycle from ideation through production
Prototype rapidly while ensuring long-term reliability, maintainability, and security
Build intuitive, accessible full-stack products from frontend interfaces or internal tools that surface model workflows and automate complex processes
Architect, build, and maintain scalable APIs and systems that integrate LLMs to power both internal tooling and customer-facing workflows
Collaborate across teams to identify solutions to data-intensive problemsMentor and support the growth of other engineers while helping to define and drive the technical roadmap

Your background

5+ years of professional software engineering experience
Strong interest in leveraging AI in the development lifecycle (bonus if experience)
Enjoys a fast-paced and collaborative environment
Proven track record owning full-stack systems: backend services (Python, FastAPI, Node.js), relational databases (Postgres/MySQL), and optionally frontend frameworks like React/Next.js
Experience designing distributed systems, APIs, data pipelines, or developer productivity infrastructure at scale
Bonus if you’ve been a founding engineer or startup early hire, with history building production products from scratch
Bonus if you’re NYC based — we have a loft office in Soho and provide lunch and snacks

Note: Even if you don't meet all the requirements, we still encourage you to apply. This role offers extensive benefits, a base salary of $185,000 USD plus competitive equity compensation and 401k match.

Seniority level