Agentic Software Engineer

Madrona Venture Labs; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Non-elective 401k contributions

Job summary

Madrona Venture Labs in San Francisco is seeking a software engineer with 1–5 years of experience to build runtime systems and AI-powered capabilities. You will work with Go and/or TypeScript, optimize performance, and deploy in Docker/Kubernetes environments.

You’ll collaborate across product and AI initiatives in a fast-moving team, with in-person collaboration in South Park/SOMA, contributing to secure, observable, high-performance software.

Qualifications

• 1–5 years of software engineering experience or strong recent graduate.
• Exposure to systems or runtime development such as compilers, instrumentation, observability, distributed systems, or performance-critical code paths.
• Proficiency in Go and/or TypeScript with a focus on performance and systems fundamentals.
• Experience deploying production software in cloud-native environments.

Responsibilities

• Use AI agents as integral tools for exploration, debugging, and code generation with iterative prototyping.
• Test - build automated test pipelines to ensure AI outputs meet standards.
• Design and implement core runtime components in a high-perf, secure environment.
• Collaborate across product, systems, and AI initiatives to expand runtime capabilities.
• Prototype interfaces where AI systems interact safely with low-level software.
• Drive projects end-to-end: design, build, test, deploy, measure, iterate.
• Contribute to a culture of curiosity, rigor, and technical excellence.
• Work in-office from South Park / SOMA with a deeply technical team.

Skills

Go

TypeScript

Distributed systems

Performance optimization

Observability

CI/CD

Containerization

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

CI/CD pipelines

Terraform/Pulumi

Job description

What You’ll Do

• Use AI agents as integral tools for exploration, debugging, and code generation—moving fast through iterative prototyping and testing to find what works best.

• Test - build automated test pipelines and tools to ensure that AI generated outputs meet functional and performance standards.

• Design and implement core runtime components in a highly performant and secure environment.

• Collaborate across product, systems, and AI initiatives to expand runtime capabilities—enabling deeper visibility, control, and intelligence within running workloads.

• Prototype and productionize interfaces where AI systems interact safely with low-level software (e.g., introspection hooks, event streams, telemetry).

• Drive projects end-to-end: design, build, test, deploy, measure, and iterate.

• Contribute to our engineering culture of curiosity, rigor, and technical excellence.

• Work primarily in-office from our South Park / SOMA location, collaborating closely with a small, deeply technical team.

What You’ll Bring

• You have 1–5 years of software engineering experience—or you’re a strong recent graduate—ideally with exposure to systems or runtime development like compilers, instrumentation, observability, distributed systems, or optimizing performance-critical code paths

• Strong proficiency in Go and/or TypeScript, with a deep understanding of performance, concurrency, and systems fundamentals.

• Comfortable using AI and agentic systems to move fast—balancing experimentation with sound engineering judgment on when to trust the tools and when to dig in yourself.

• Experience deploying production software in cloud-native environments (Docker, Kubernetes, modern CI/CD, Terraform/Pulumi).

• Excellent collaboration and communication skills; comfortable in a fast-moving, low-ego engineering culture.

Nice to Have

• Experience with Claude Code.

• Background in observability or introspection tooling.

• Interest in how AI can enhance system visibility, security, or automation.

Why You’ll Love Working Here

• Work on cutting-edge runtime technology at the intersection of security, observability, and AI.

• Collaborate with an experienced, thoughtful team that values deep technical understanding and craftsmanship.

• A collaborative, in-person environment in the heart of San Francisco’s South Park / SOMA district.

• The opportunity to shape how modern developers build, ship, and secure software in the AI-accelerated era.

Compensation

• Equity and benefits available.

• Non-elective 401k contributions.