Staff Software Engineer

kadence; Toronto; Hybrid; CAD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Job summary

Kadence, in partnership with a global technology organization, seeks a Staff Software Engineer, AI to provide hands-on technical leadership across design, development, and scaling of enterprise-grade AI systems. This senior IC role offers influence over architecture, engineering standards, and product direction, with emphasis on production AI, RAG pipelines, and autonomous agents.

You will mentor engineers, drive MLOps/LLMOps, optimize latency and reliability, and work with cloud platforms

Qualifications

• 8+ years of software engineering experience with 4+ years in senior AI/ML roles.
• Experience building and deploying Generative AI, LLM, RAG, or agentic systems.
• Knowledge of AI/ML frameworks such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, or JAX.
• Strong understanding of distributed systems and cloud-native architecture.
• Experience with AWS, Azure, or GCP; familiarity with MLOps/LLMOps.
• Proven ability to lead complex technical initiatives and mentor engineers.
• Strong communication skills for influencing senior stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Architect and build production-grade AI systems, including RAG pipelines and autonomous agents.
• Integrate AI models into scalable applications via APIs, data pipelines, and microservices.
• Lead architectural decisions and define best practices for AI development.
• Evaluate emerging AI technologies and turn ideas into production capabilities.
• Champion MLOps and LLMOps across the development lifecycle.
• Improve system performance across latency, reliability, cost, and user experience.
• Mentor engineers and influence senior stakeholders.
• Establish testing, monitoring, security, and AI governance practices.

Skills

Generative AI / LLM / RAG

Distributed systems

Cloud-native architecture

AI/ML frameworks (PyTorch, TensorFlow,

MLOps / LLMOps

Stakeholder communication

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

Terraform

Job description

We're partnering with a global technology organization that is investing heavily in AI and building intelligent products used by professionals in complex, highly regulated industries.

They're looking for a Staff Software Engineer, AI to provide hands-on technical leadership across the design, development, and scaling of enterprise-grade AI systems. This is a senior individual contributor opportunity with significant influence over architecture, engineering standards, and product direction.

What you'll do

• Architect and build production-grade AI systems, including RAG pipelines and autonomous agents
• Integrate AI models into scalable applications through APIs, distributed data pipelines, and microservices
• Lead technical architecture decisions and define best practices for AI development
• Evaluate emerging AI technologies and turn promising ideas into production capabilities
• Champion MLOps and LLMOps practices across the development lifecycle
• Improve system performance across latency, reliability, cost, and user experience
• Mentor engineers and influence senior technical and product stakeholders
• Establish strong testing, monitoring, security, and AI governance practices

What we're looking for

• 8+ years of software engineering experience, including 4+ years in senior or lead AI/ML roles
• Experience building and deploying Generative AI, LLM, RAG, or agentic systems
• Knowledge of AI/ML frameworks such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, or JAX
• Experience with vector databases, embeddings, semantic search, or information retrieval
• Strong understanding of distributed systems and cloud-native architecture
• Experience with AWS, Azure, or GCP
• Familiarity with Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform, and MLOps/LLMOps
• A track record of leading complex technical initiatives and mentoring engineers
• Strong communication skills with the ability to influence senior stakeholders

Experience building AI products for regulated or specialized industries would be an asset.

This is an opportunity to remain highly technical while helping shape the architecture and strategy behind enterprise AI products at scale.