Lead Software Engineer - Bee AI

Bumbleinc; Austin (TX); Hybrid; USD 190,000 - 280,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical/dental/vision for employees

Unlimited PTO

Company-wide week off

Focus Fridays

Life and disability insurance

401(k) with company match

Wellness benefit

Job summary

Bumble Inc. is seeking a Lead Software Engineer for the Bee AI team in Austin. You will shape AI agent systems, guide development across engineering, product, and data, and drive responsible AI practices from design to deployment.

You’ll own end-to-end agent workflows, promote reliable, scalable Python services on GCP, and collaborate across teams to ship impactful, user-centric features that improve match quality and conversation dynamics.

Qualifications

• 8–10 years of software engineering experience in production systems.
• Strong Python expertise and track record building scalable backend services.
• Hands-on experience guiding AI/ML-powered product experiences, especially AI agents, prompts, context orchestration, and evaluation strategies.
• Experience designing schema-validated LLM interactions, prompts, and deterministic fallbacks for production.
• GCP-based cloud infrastructure design with observability and reliability in mind.
• Ability to define approaches for ambiguous high-impact problems and influence across teams.

Responsibilities

• Lead design, build, and extension of production AI agent systems for Bee to enhance curated member interactions.
• Architect and evolve Python-based services and agent workflows with focus on reliability and maintainability.
• Define end-to-end agent design, including prompt management, context handling, response schemas, and fallbacks.
• Establish robust evaluation approaches for agent quality, including offline/online tests and telemetry.
• Build patterns for monitoring, debugging, and production agent management with observability and performance analysis.
• Collaborate with Product, Design, and Data within Bee AI to ship features and integrate with adjacent teams.
• Apply responsible AI practices by assessing outputs for quality, bias, safety, and transparency with human oversight where needed.
• Set high standards for code quality, system design, and delivery with an agile mindset.

Skills

Python

AI/ML experience

Backend services

GCP

LLM prompts

Tools

PydanticAI

GCP

Job description

At Bumble, we’re on a mission to create a world where all relationships are healthy and equitable. The Bee AI team is reimagining how people meet by introducing an intelligent, AI‑powered product that sits alongside Bumble Date—helping members connect in more curated, thoughtful, and human ways, while preserving the magic of matching and conversation at the core of the Bumble experience.

As a Lead Software Engineer, you’ll play a pivotal role in shaping this next generation of connection. Bee is already live and evolving quickly. If you’d like a glimpse into the experience we’re building, you can explore a recent preview here: https://www.instagram.com/p/DVwmOw_jKUf/. We’re now scaling both the ambition and the systems behind it by building intelligent agents that guide interactions, enhance matchmaking, and continuously learn from member behaviour. You’ll help define how AI shows up responsibly and meaningfully in people’s experiences, role-modeling our values of Curiosity and Courage as you explore new frontiers.

This is a highly impactful individual‑contributor role with broad influence across engineering, product, and data. You’ll operate as a technical leader within the Bee AI team, setting direction for how we build, evaluate, and scale AI agents while collaborating with purpose, taking ownership, and seeing ideas through to real‑world impact.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design, build, and extension of production AI agent systems for Bee, creating more curated ways for members to meet within a distinct AI‑driven product experience.
• Architect and evolve Python‑based services and agent workflows using PydanticAI and GCP, with a strong focus on reliability, extensibility, and maintainability.
• Define and improve how we build agents end to end, including prompt management, context handling, response schemas, fallback logic, and versioning practices.
• Establish robust evaluation approaches for agent quality, including offline and online evaluations, experimentation frameworks, telemetry, and clear success criteria for agent behaviour.
• Build repeatable patterns for monitoring, debugging, and managing agents in production, including observability, performance analysis, and continuous improvement loops.
• Partner closely with Product, Design, and Data within the Bee AI team to turn ambiguous opportunities into shipped features, while collaborating effectively with adjacent teams where integration is required.
• Apply strong technical judgment to responsible AI development by assessing outputs for quality, bias, safety, and transparency, ensuring human oversight where it matters most.
• Act as a technical leader by setting a high bar for code quality, system design, and delivery, collaborating with purpose, taking ownership, and demonstrating an agile mindset in line with our values of Courage, Respect, and Excellence.

Qualifications

• Typically requires 8–10 years of experience, though we welcome candidates with alternative backgrounds that demonstrate equivalent skills.
• You bring deep software engineering experience in production systems, with strong Python expertise and a track record of building scalable backend services.
• You have hands‑on experience building or guiding AI and ML‑powered product experiences, especially around AI agents, prompt design, context orchestration, and evaluation strategies.
• You are comfortable designing schema‑validated LLM interactions, managing prompts and response structures, and creating deterministic fallbacks and safeguards for production use.
• You have experience with cloud infrastructure on GCP and know how to design systems with strong observability, resilience, and operational clarity.
• You are skilled at defining technical approaches for ambiguous, high‑impact problems, using independent judgment while influencing across teams and creating alignment.
• You know how to build evaluation and feedback loops for AI systems, including instrumentation, experimentation, monitoring, and iterative improvement of agent behaviour over time.
• You collaborate effectively across disciplines, take ownership of outcomes, and adapt quickly as priorities evolve, demonstrating an agile mindset and working with purpose.
• You use AI thoughtfully in your own work to improve speed, quality, and learning, while ensuring responsible, inclusive, and human‑centred application.

This role is based in Austin, and you’re required to be within a commutable distance to this office so that you can come onsite regularly to collaborate across engineering teams. We have a hybrid environment that requires you to be in the office Monday–Wednesday.

We are unable to offer Visa sponsorship at this time.

Benefits & Perks

• Medical/dental/vision insurance, 30‑day eligibility.
• Unlimited PTO + 1 company‑wide week off + Focus Fridays every week.
• Fully paid life and long‑term disability insurance.
• 401(k) with 4% company match if you contribute 6%, 90‑day eligibility.
• Monthly wellness benefit and access to Noom, Unmind, and Your Money Line.
• Maternity and fertility benefit + 26‑week paid parental leave.
• Premium app access.

Equal Opportunity Employer

Bumble Inc. is an equal opportunity employer and we strongly encourage people of all ages, colour, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and non‑binary people, veterans, parents, people with disabilities, and neurodivergent people to apply. We're happy to make any reasonable adjustments that will help you feel more confident throughout the process, please don't hesitate to let us know how we can help.