Member of Technical Staff: AI Product Engineer

Lightspeed AI, Inc.; Seattle, Northern (WA, KY); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Lightspeed AI is seeking a discerning Member of Technical Staff to own product surfaces that power reinforcement learning and agent interaction. You will define interfaces between products and core platform, shaping data models for RL-at-scale and agent usability.

You’ll work with a founding team known for frontiers in Human <> AI interaction, shaping experiences for both users and agents and driving successful interactions across Lightspeed's products.

Qualifications

• Expertise in building new product experiences and leading best practices.
• Understanding of backend concepts like Map Reduce, Queues, CAP.
• Willingness to defend technical choices with conviction.
• Self-starter under uncertainty to deliver high-impact solutions.

Responsibilities

• Turn RL research into real products and contribute to research.
• Own the product stack including architecture and frontend/backend interfaces.
• Invent brand new product surfaces from concept to deployment and feedback.
• Help define technical culture blending human expertise with AI agents.
• Mentor and grow the team of future technical hires and AI coding agents.

Skills

Product Engineering

Backend concepts

Low ego

Resourceful

Design-minded

API experience

CLI experience

MCP experience

Graduate degree

Education

Graduate degree in CS/ML or equivalent

Job description

Why This Role is Different

You will be the owner of our product surfaces that powers reinforcement learning and recursive-self improvement of agents. This role is as the bleeding edge of Human <> AI interaction (AIX), working with agent protocols & workflows, and creating fantastic experiences for our users. If you like to solely work in the front end, this is not a role for you; you will also be workingto define the interfaces between our products and our core platform, the data models that both work well for RL-at-scale as well as being sensible to agents (& humans), and even defining what products that are solely used by agents should be..

This is not a role to take UX mockups, fire up Claude Code, enter a prompt, and walk away. You'll be at the heart of defining new experiences for our customers (and agents) and owning the success of their interactions with Lightspeed's products.

As a Member of Technical Staff, you will work directly with our founding team who have been at the forefront of Human <> AI interaction as a research scientist at MIT, architected a hyperscaler AI platform from first principles, led teams in Responsible AI & Human-Centered Technology at Google, and literally wrote the book on explainable AI. We like to dive deep, and slow down to tackle really tough challenges so we can build up momentum to deliver quickly.

What you'll do

• Turn RL research into real Products (& probably invent some RL along the way): Working with our research & core platform team, you'll be responsible for making applied RL research and theory a product for everyday AI Builders. RL is open-ended, and so we expect you to also roll up your sleeves, grab a whiteboard marker, and contribute to research along the way.
• Own the Product stack: You will be leading our product architecture, UX components library, and the dance between frontend and backend services.
• Invent brand new Product Surfaces: In addition to a web frontend, you will own our other products surfaces, from concept to feature design to implementation to customer feedback to deployment. You are not bound by PRDs and technical design docs.
• Build our Engineering DNA: You will be a key participant in defining the technical culture that blends human expertise and AI agents. We are not afraid of adapting the new way of doing software development with AI, while we blend it with the battle tested patterns of software engineering architecture in the past decades.
• Growth & Mentoring: You will directly contribute to the growth of the team of future technical hires, as well as the team of AI coding agents, to elevate the product.

What we're looking for

• Expert at Product Engineering: You have deep experiences and expertise in building new product experiences, and lead in establishing best practices.
• Experience with backend concepts & systems: You understand Map Reduce, Queues, CAP, and other challenges that are often encountered in backends that have an impact on how user/agent-facing products are designed and built.
• Low ego, but lead with high conviction: You are comfortable being challenged, try out many ideas, but willing to defend well-reasoned technical choices you make.
• Resourceful, self-starter and self-motivator: We are in the middle of the disrupting paradigm shift in both software development and software product development. Under such uncertainty, you enjoy riding on the driver’s seat, and find ways to build high impact solutions, with limited resources.

Strong Pluses

• Design-minded: You aspire to deliver not only software with great technologies implemented, but you think deeply about pixels, colors, motion design, and creating great workflows for users.
• API, CLI, MCP experience: How should machines talk to each other? You know how to make them harmonize!
• Graduate degree in CS/ML or industry-experience equivalent: You've demonstrated ability to tackle difficult, open-ended questions and turn them intro tractable solutions