Senior / Staff Software Engineer, AI Tooling

Waabi; Toronto; On-site; CAD 230,000 - 370,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity awards

Health benefits

Unlimited vacation

Flexible hours

Catering meals

Job summary

Waabi is building AI tooling to accelerate all Waabi teams. The Senior Software Engineer on the AI Tech Strike Team will design, build, and ship tools that boost productivity across engineering, research, and business units.

You will pilot AI tools, prototype workflows, and collaborate with multiple stakeholders to deliver impactful solutions while ensuring responsible AI practices and strong observability.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of software engineering with shipping tools/platforms used by large user bases.
• Hands-on familiarity with AI coding tools and agents (Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot, Codex).
• Strong Python skills and experience with CI/CD and developer infra.
• Strong product instincts to identify high-leverage problems and deliver adopted solutions.
• Excellent written and verbal communication, autonomous in fast-moving settings.
• Passionate about self-driving tech, frontier AI, and impactful AI tooling.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and ship internal tooling, agents, and workflows for Waabi's autonomy and AI tooling needs.
• Integrate third-party AI tools and build integrations for Waabi's environment.
• Evaluate new AI tools and pilot them, informing build-vs-buy decisions.
• Collaborate with engineers, researchers, and business teams to prototype solutions.
• Build observability and track usage, cost, and quality of tooling.
• Help implement guardrails for responsible AI tooling in partnership with security/legal.

Skills

5+ years software eng

AI tooling familiarity

Python proficiency

Product instincts

Communication skills

Passion for AI/AV

Tools

Claude Code

Cursor

Copilot

Codex

Job description

Waabi, founded by AI visionary Raquel Urtasun, is the leader in Physical AI. With a world-class team, we're unlocking the next era of autonomous transportation with technology that's powering commercial autonomous trucks and robotaxis. Waabi is backed by and partners with world leaders in AI, automotive, logistics, and deep tech.

With offices in Toronto, San Francisco, Dallas, and Pittsburgh, Waabi is growing quickly and looking for diverse, innovative and collaborative candidates who want to impact the world in a positive way. To learn more visit: www.waabi.ai

The latest advances in AI tooling is fundamentally changing all teams' ways of working - from ML model development, to traditional software development, to non-technical business functions. We are building a dedicated AI Technical Strike Team to establish centralized best practices for working with AI across Waabi with the aim of maximizing productivity. We are looking for hands-on senior software engineers to build the AI tooling, agents, and workflows that accelerate how we work. As a Software Engineer on the AI Tech Strike Team, you will design, build, and ship the tools that compound the productivity of every team at Waabi. The team will own a mix of core tooling work and deployed engagements, where members of the team work closely with functions across Waabi to understand their pain points and co-design AI workflows to maximize productivity.

You will...

• Design, build, and ship custom internal tooling, agents, and workflows tailored to Waabi — supporting our autonomy codebase, simulation environments, ML training pipelines, and research workflows, as well as agents and automations for business teams.
• Integrate and extend third-party AI tools — from coding assistants and agents (e.g., Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot) to AI tools for non-engineering functions — building the integrations, configurations, and internal extensions that make them work well for Waabi.
• Evaluate new AI tools, models, and agent frameworks as they emerge, run structured pilots, and provide clear technical recommendations that inform build-vs-buy decisions.
• Partner directly with engineers, researchers, and business teams to understand their workflows, prototype solutions quickly, and iterate based on real usage.
• Build observability around AI tooling at Waabi — tracking usage, adoption, cost, and quality — so we can prioritize with data and understand impact.
• Implement the guardrails for responsible AI tooling at Waabi in partnership with Security, Legal, IT, and Infrastructure.
• Drive adoption of the tools you build through documentation, enablement, office hours, and hands-on support — helping every team get more out of their tools every week.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of software engineering experience, with a track record of shipping tools, platforms, or products used by large internal or external user bases.
• Deep, hands-on familiarity with the current generation of AI coding tools and agents (Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot, Codex, or similar), and demonstrated experience building and shipping AI-powered products, agents, or workflows — including prompt engineering, evals, tool use, and integrating LLMs into production systems.
• Strong proficiency in Python (or another common programming language), and comfort working across modern build systems, CI/CD pipelines, and developer infrastructure.
• Strong product instincts and judgment: you can identify high-leverage problems across a diverse set of teams, scope pragmatic solutions, and ship things that actually get adopted.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, comfortable operating with a high degree of autonomy in ambiguous, fast-moving territory and influencing engineers, researchers, and business partners.
• Passionate about self-driving technologies, frontier AI, and using AI to push the boundary of what a small, world-class team can accomplish.

Bonus/nice to have

• Prior experience in a developer productivity, platform engineering, or AI tooling role, ideally with exposure to ML, robotics, or autonomous systems infrastructure (e.g., training pipelines, simulation tooling, large monorepos).
• Experience working effectively with non-engineering stakeholders — translating business workflows into technical solutions for functions like Finance, Commercial, Marketing, HR, Legal, and Operations.
• Experience building AI workflows or automation for business functions outside of engineering (e.g., finance automation, marketing operations, HR workflows).
• Experience deploying and operating AI systems in security- and IP-sensitive environments.
• Contributions to open-source AI tooling, agent frameworks, or developer tools.

The US yearly salary range for this role is: $165,000 - $265,000 USD in addition to competitive perks & benefits. Waabi (US) Inc.’s yearly salary ranges are determined based on several factors in accordance with the Company’s compensation practices. The salary base range is reflective of the minimum and maximum target for new hire salaries for the position across all US locations. Note: The Company provides additional compensation for employees in this role, including equity incentive awards and an annual performance bonus.

Perks/Benefits

• Competitive compensation and equity awards.
• Health and Wellness benefits encompassing Medical, Dental and Vision coverage (for full-time employees only).
• Unlimited Vacation.
• Flexible hours and Work from Home support.
• Daily drinks, snacks and catered meals (when in office).
• Regularly scheduled team building activities and social events both on-site, off-site & virtually.
• As we grow, this list continues to evolve!

Waabi is a technology start-up building technologies to transform the way the world moves. Join our talented team to be a part of the future and to make an impact!

Waabi is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating a supportive, inclusive, and accessible workplace for all our employees. We seek applicants of all backgrounds and identities, across race, color, ethnicity, national origin or ancestry, age, citizenship, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, military or veteran status, marital status, pregnancy or parental status, caregiver status, disability, or any other characteristic protected by law. We make workplace accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities as required by applicable law. If reasonable accommodation is needed to participate in the job application or interview process please let our recruiting team know.

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.