Lead Software Engineer

alternativepayments; United States; Remote; USD 100,000 - 120,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Unlimited PTO

Learning stipend

Job summary

Alternative Payments is seeking a Lead Software Engineer to shape the technical direction of an AI agent product, moving from MVP to a core platform component. This is a hands-on leadership role focused on LLM-powered features, agent architectures, and transitioning to proprietary ML models.

You will own end-to-end AI feature direction, design and enforce standards for evaluation, prompt management, and observability, and drive production readiness with monitoring and feedback loops.

Qualifications

• Strong software engineering background with a track record of owning technical decisions on product features end to end.
• Hands-on experience shipping AI products in the last 12 months, including LLMs, agents, or AI features, with ownership of meaningful system components.
• Experience with chatbots or conversational AI, retrieval-augmented generation, and LLM evaluation pipelines.
• Proficiency in Go, TypeScript/JavaScript, or Python; ability to design new processes in uncharted areas.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end technical direction for AI agent features, spanning conversational experiences, agents, and automated routines.
• Define and evolve standards for LLM evaluation, prompt management, monitoring, and observability.
• Lead design of retrieval-augmented generation pipelines and agent architectures, including core trade-off decisions.
• Drive move from LLM-only features to proprietary ML models, taking models to production with monitoring and feedback loops.
• Identify and shape new ML use cases across the product platform in collaboration with the Product team.
• Serve as an internal AI reference for the product engineering organization, reviewing designs and mentoring peers.
• Maintain a hands-on coding practice, contributing production code every week.

Skills

Go

TypeScript/JavaScript

Python

AI product deployment

Job description

Role overview

A Lead Software Engineer is needed to set the technical direction for an AI agent product that has launched and is now scaling from MVP into a core part of the platform. This is a hands-on technical leadership role (not a people management role) covering LLM-powered features, agent architectures, and the transition toward proprietary machine learning models. The position is remote and based in Brazil.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end technical direction for AI agent features, spanning conversational experiences, agents, and automated routines
• Define and evolve standards for LLM evaluation, prompt management, monitoring, and observability
• Lead design of retrieval-augmented generation pipelines and agent architectures, including the core trade-off decisions
• Drive the move from LLM-only features to proprietary ML models, taking models to production with monitoring and continuous feedback loops
• Identify and shape new ML use cases across the product platform in collaboration with the Product team
• Serve as an internal AI reference for the product engineering organization, reviewing designs and mentoring peers
• Maintain a hands-on coding practice, contributing production code every week

Requirements

• Strong software engineering background with a track record of owning technical decisions on product features end to end
• Hands-on experience shipping AI products in the last 12 months, including LLMs, agents, or AI features, with ownership of meaningful system components
• Experience with chatbots or conversational AI, retrieval-augmented generation, and LLM evaluation pipelines
• Strong skills in at least one of Go, TypeScript/JavaScript, or Python
• Ability to define new processes in uncharted problem areas rather than only executing existing playbooks
• A product mindset that cares about what gets delivered to users, not just the model
• Comfort operating in a fast-paced environment where you own many parts of the delivery chain
• Professional working proficiency in English

Nice to have

• Experience taking ML models to production with monitoring and feedback loops
• Familiarity with AI monitoring and observability tooling
• Prompt engineering experience
• Building autonomous or personal agents that operate across channels such as Slack, Teams, or WhatsApp
• Background in fintech, payments, or financial products
• Experience at both early-stage startups (Seed to Series B) and larger tech companies

Benefits and work setup

• Total compensation range of $100,000 - $120,000 plus equity, with the range reflecting approximate target pay
• Equity participation tied to company growth
• Unlimited paid time off with flexibility when needed
• Annual learning and development stipend
• Remote position based in Brazil