Lead Software Engineer - Bee AI

Bumble; Austin, Northern (TX, KY); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Bumble’s Bee AI team is reimagining how people meet by building AI-powered experiences that sit beside Bumble Date, focusing on curated, human connections. This Lead role shapes production AI agent systems and guides the evolution of backend services in Python on GCP.

You’ll lead design and implementation, ensure reliability, and collaborate across product, data, and design to deploy impactful features while keeping safety, transparency, and responsible AI at the core.

Qualifications

• 8–10+ years of software engineering experience in production systems.
• Strong Python expertise with a track record of building scalable backend services.
• Hands-on experience guiding AI/ML-powered product experiences, especially AI agents, prompt design, context orchestration, and evaluation strategies.
• Experience designing schema-validated LLM interactions, managing prompts and response structures, and deterministic fallbacks for production use.
• Experience with cloud infrastructure on GCP and designing systems with observability, resilience, and operational clarity.

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 focus on reliability and maintainability.
• Define and improve end-to-end agent development, including prompt management, context handling, response schemas, and versioning.

Skills

Python

AI/ML

Backend services

GCP

LLM interactions

Observability

Code quality

Tools

PydanticAI

Google Cloud Platform (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 - 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 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.

• 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

Location

• This role is based in Austin, and we ask that you’re within a commutable distance to this office, so that you’re able to come onsite regularly to collaborate across engineering teams.

• We have a hybrid environment that requires you to be in the office Monday - Wednesday.

• Please note: We are unable to offer Visa sponsorship at this time

About Us

Bumble Inc. is the parent company of Bumble Date, BFF, and Badoo. The Bumble platform enables people to build healthy and equitable relationships, through Kind Connections. Founded by Whitney Wolfe Herd in 2014, Bumble was one of the first dating apps built with women at the center and connects people across dating (Bumble Date) and friendship (BFF). BFF is a friendship app where people in all stages of life can meet people nearby and create meaningful platonic connections and community based on shared interests. Badoo, which was founded in 2006, is one of the pioneers of web and mobile dating products.

AI Fluency

AI is important to us. We’re excited by people who are curious and experimental, and who think thoughtfully about how AI can amplify their impact and outcomes.

We encourage you to use AI responsibly as you prepare your application. Please don’t use it to fabricate experiences or answer questions live in interviews. We care deeply about authenticity and want to understand your real skills, judgment and voice, because building a meaningful, genuine connection with you matters to us.

Final Compensation

Will be determined based on factors such as the selected candidate’s qualifications, relevant experience, skill set, and other job‑related considerations.

Inclusion at Bumble Inc.

Bumble Inc. is an equal opportunity employer and we strongly encourage people of all ages, color, 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.

In your application, please feel free to note which pronouns you use (For example: she/her, he/him, they/them, etc).

AI in Bumble Inc. Hiring

At Bumble, we may use AI tools to support parts of our recruitment process — such as helping us record, transcribe, and summarize conversations, and supporting job alignment by comparing resumes and job descriptions to highlight skills and potential roles that may be a good match. These tools help us work more efficiently and stay focused on you during our conversations. Importantly, all hiring decisions are made by people. AI is used only to support our team’s efficiency and improve the candidate experience — not to evaluate or decide on your candidacy. Participation in AI‑supported interviews and conversations is completely voluntary and will not impact your candidacy. If you’d prefer to opt out, simply let your recruiter or interviewer know at the start of a call, or anytime during the interview or conversation. Summaries and related data are retained only as long as needed in line with our internal data retention policies. If at any point you’d like a transcription or summary deleted, please contact your recruiter directly.

Fraudulent Candidate Detection

Our applicant tracking system analyzes signals relating to device, IP, email, and phone data associated with each application to protect applicants and our hiring process from fraudulent applications. These signals provide indicators for internal review only and do not constitute a definitive determination of identity or intent. No applicant is rejected, advanced, or otherwise affected based solely on this analysis without human review

For further information on how we hold and manage your data, please refer to our Privacy Policy.