AI Harness Engineer

Armis; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 197,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

Armis is seeking a hands-on Backend Engineer to build secure AI infrastructure and production-grade AI agent systems. You will work with AI researchers and backend engineers to move ideas into production while setting engineering standards.

You’ll design the agent control plane, embeddings controls, and reusable services, APIs, and CLI tools, partnering with stakeholders across Product, Sales, and Executive teams. 5+ years of backend experience is expected.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of backend software engineering experience.
• Experience building AI Harnesses is required.
• Experience with Harness & AI Security is required.
• Experience building backend services and microservice architectures.
• Experience working with AWS cloud services.
• Experience designing APIs and distributed systems.
• Hands-on experience building AI applications, AI agents, or agentic workflows.
• Experience working with Agent SDKs.
• Familiarity with Model Context Protocol (MCP).
• Experience building developer tools, APIs, or CLI applications.

Responsibilities

• Design and build secure AI infrastructure for production AI agents.
• Develop Agent Control Plane capabilities that manage, monitor, and secure agent execution.
• Build embedded controls and security mechanisms directly into AI agents.
• Develop reusable services, APIs, and developer tooling that support AI applications.
• Build and maintain integrations with modern Agent SDKs and Model Context Protocol (MCP).
• Design backend microservices using Python and AWS.
• Build observability into AI systems, including telemetry, monitoring, tracing, and operational visibility.
• Develop public-facing developer tools and command-line interfaces (CLI).
• Partner closely with AI researchers to rapidly transition prototypes into production-ready systems.
• Own projects from architecture through deployment.
• Help define engineering standards and reusable patterns across the AI platform.
• Collaborate with stakeholders across the board in our Product, Sales, and Executive teams.

Skills

Backend development

AI Harness

AWS

Agent SDKs

MCP

APIs

Distributed systems

Tools

Harness

Kubernetes

CLI tooling

Job description

We're building the next generation of secure AI infrastructure.

Our team is creating the foundational technologies that allow AI agents to operate safely, securely, and reliably at scale. This includes building secure agent control planes, embedded controls, developer tooling, observability, and infrastructure that enables production-ready AI systems.

This is a hands-on engineering role for someone who enjoys building products from the ground up. You'll partner closely with AI researchers and backend engineers to rapidly move ideas into production while helping establish engineering best practices across our AI Center of Excellence.

******This is NOT a machine learning or model training role *****

Instead, we're looking for exceptional "Backend Engineers" who understand modern AI systems and enjoy building the infrastructure and products around them.

What You’ll Do

• Design and build secure AI infrastructure for production AI agents.
• Develop Agent Control Plane capabilities that manage, monitor, and secure agent execution.
• Build embedded controls and security mechanisms directly into AI agents.
• Develop reusable services, APIs, and developer tooling that support AI applications.
• Build and maintain integrations with modern Agent SDKs and Model Context Protocol (MCP).
• Design backend microservices using Python and AWS.
• Build observability into AI systems, including telemetry, monitoring, tracing, and operational visibility.
• Develop public-facing developer tools and command-line interfaces (CLI).
• Partner closely with AI researchers to rapidly transition prototypes into production-ready systems.
• Own projects from architecture through deployment.
• Help define engineering standards and reusable patterns across the AI platform.
• Collaborate with stakeholders across the board in our Product, Sales, and Executive teams. Along with collaborate with senior engineers while independently leading technical initiatives when appropriate

What We're Looking For

Required

• 5+ years of backend software engineering experience.
• Experience building AI Harnesses is required
• Experience with Harness & AI Security is required
• Experience building backend services and microservice architectures.
• Experience working with AWS cloud services.
• Experience designing APIs and distributed systems.
• Hands-on experience building AI applications, AI agents, or agentic workflows.
• Experience working with Agent SDKs.
• Familiarity with Model Context Protocol (MCP).
• Experience building developer tools, APIs, or CLI applications.
• Strong understanding of software architecture and production engineering.
• Comfortable working in startup environments with significant ownership.
• Ability to independently drive projects from concept through production.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience building Agent Control Planes.
• Experience implementing embedded controls or policy enforcement within AI agents.
• Experience building AI observability platforms.
• Security engineering background.
• Experience building secure AI systems.
• Experience working with LLMs in production environments.
• Experience with Kubernetes and containerized services.
• Experience integrating AI systems with cloud infrastructure.
• Familiarity with AI governance, guardrails, and runtime s

Pay range: $197,000 - $230,000 Bonus & RSU's