Head AI Developer Tools Engineer

Socket.dev; McLean (VA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 300,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

401(k) match

Paid time off

Medical, dental, and vision plans

Life and disability insurance

Wellness programs

HSA/FSAs

Employee referral bonus

Learning and development resources

Job summary

Appian is seeking a Lead AI Developer Tooling Engineer to architect and deliver developer-facing tools such as IDE integrations, CLIs, code-analysis, and CI/CD workflows. You will leverage AI tooling to enhance engineering productivity while maintaining enterprise-grade reliability.

The role is based in McLean, VA, with in-office collaboration expected five days per week, and a focus on performance, scale, and engineering excellence across teams.

Qualifications

• Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science or a related discipline.
• 7+ years of software development experience with a BS (or 5+ years with MS).
• Experience building IDEs, CLIs, code-analysis, CI/CD, or developer-experience tools.
• Strong problem solving, telemetry, and enterprise deployment constraints knowledge.
• Proven experience evaluating and applying AI-generated code in production contexts.
• Excellent ability to communicate complex architectures to diverse engineering teams.

Responsibilities

• Architect, build, and optimize developer-facing tools and services.
• Design IDE integrations, CLIs, code-analysis, and CI/CD tooling.
• Use AI tools to accelerate development while maintaining quality.
• Expose AI capabilities through user-friendly developer workflows.
• Ensure reliable performance and scalability of tooling in prod environments.
• Mentor junior engineers and contribute to technical docs and best practices.

Skills

IDE tooling

CI/CD tooling

AI coding assistants

DevOps practices

Code analysis

High-volume production

Technical communication

Education

Bachelor of Science in Computer Science or related field

Master of Science in Computer Science or related field

Job description

Appian is seeking a Lead AI Developer Tooling Engineer to architect and deliver developer-facing tools such as IDE integrations, CLIs, code-analysis, and CI/CD workflows. You will leverage AI tooling to enhance engineering productivity while maintaining enterprise-grade reliability.

The role is based in McLean, VA, with in-office collaboration expected five days per week, and a focus on performance, scale, and engineering excellence across teams.