Lead Software Engineer - Bee AI

Bumble Inc.; Austin (TX); Hybrid; USD 225,000 - 255,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, Dental, Vision

Unlimited Paid Time Off

401(k) match

Parental Leave

Focus Fridays

Job summary

Bumble Inc. is seeking a Lead Software Engineer in Austin to shape the future of AI-powered connections. In this pivotal role, you'll design and evolve AI systems, ensuring impactful and reliable experiences.

Applicants should possess deep Python expertise and experience with scalable backend services. The position offers a hybrid work environment with competitive compensation from $225,000 to $255,000 annually.

Join us at Bumble where we value curiosity, courage, and inclusion in our teams.

Qualifications

• 8–10 years of experience in software engineering.
• Deep experience in production systems and Python.
• Hands-on with AI and ML product experiences.

Responsibilities

• Lead design and build of AI systems for Bee.
• Architect Python-based services focusing on reliability.
• Define and improve agent evaluation approaches.

Skills

Python expertise

AI development

Backend service architecture

Cloud infrastructure (GCP)

Technical leadership

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. You’ll help define how AI shows up responsibly and meaningfully in people’s experiences, role modelling 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.

What You’ll Do

• 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.

About you

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

Location

• This role is based in Austin and requires you to be within commuting distance to the office for regular onsite collaboration across engineering teams.
• A hybrid environment requires in‑office presence Monday – Wednesday.
• Please note: We are unable to offer Visa sponsorship at this time.

Compensation

$225,000 – $255,000 a year. For base compensation, this range is based on function, level, and geographic location. The position is typically eligible to participate in short‑and long‑term incentive programs.

Benefits

• Medical, Dental, Vision, 401(k) match, Unlimited Paid Time Off Policy.
• Maven Fertility: $10,000 lifetime benefit for fertility, adoption, abortion care, and more.
• 26 Weeks Parental Leave for both primary and secondary caregivers.
• Family & Compassionate Leave including domestic violence recovery.
• Unlimited Paid Time Off: Take the time you need.
• Company‑wide Week Off: Annual collective rest for the entire company.
• Focus Fridays: No meetings, emails, or deadlines — just deep work.
• Fully paid life and long‑term disability insurance.
• 401k 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 let us know if we can help.