Member of Technical Staff - Development Experience

Unconventional AI; Los Angeles (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Health benefits

401k matching

Unlimited PTO

Free meals (Palo Alto)

Job summary

Unconventional AI in Palo Alto, CA seeks a Member of Technical Staff, Development Experience, to be the operational backbone of our extreme co-design workflow. You will own the standardized development environments, CI/CD pipelines, and Infrastructure as Code that enable a highly interdisciplinary team to iterate quickly on simulations, ML training, and hardware verification.

You will also pioneer our agentic coding initiatives, designing systems that extract and persist developer context across

Qualifications

• BS in Computer Science or equivalent practical experience.
• 5+ years of software engineering, platform engineering, or DevEx experience.
• Strong Python programming with robust automation scripting.
• Linux/Unix mastery with Docker and Kubernetes.
• Experience designing/managing CI/CD pipelines and cloud deployments (OCI, AWS, GCP, Azure).
• Familiarity with agentic code development and AI-assisted workflows.

Responsibilities

• Build, standardize, and maintain development and research environments for software, physics, and silicon engineers.
• Architect agentic knowledge management systems for cross-host persistence and AI-assisted coding workflows.
• Own CI/CD pipelines, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), and observability across the engineering stack.
• Promote best engineering practices to balance velocity with research agility.

Skills

Python

Shell scripting

Linux/Unix

Docker

Kubernetes

CI/CD

Cloud platforms

Databases & storage

Agentic coding

Education

BS in Computer Science

Tools

Terraform

Backstage

Git

Observability tools

Vector DBs

Job description

About Unconventional

Since 2022, AI has entered the mainstream, reshaping entire industries from education and software development to fundamental consumer behaviors. This revolution has created an unprecedented demand for computation - a demand that is now fundamentally limited by energy, not just in the datacenter, but at a global scale.

About Unconventional, Since 2022, AI has entered the mainstream, reshaping entire industries from education and software development to fundamental consumer behaviors. This revolution has created an unprecedented demand for computation - a demand that is now fundamentally limited by energy, not just in the datacenter, but at a global scale.

The Role

As a Member of Technical Staff, Development Experience, you are the operational backbone of Unconventional AI's "extreme co-design" workflow. Unlike a traditional platform engineering role, your internal customers are a wildly multi-disciplinary mix of AI researchers, integrated-circuit experts, and silicon engineers building the future of physics-based compute. You will own the standardized development environments, CI/CD pipelines, and Infrastructure as Code that allow this diverse team to rapidly iterate on complex simulations, ML training, and hardware verification without friction.

While our heavy GPU compute clusters are managed by a dedicated infrastructure pod, you will own the overarching developer experience and establishing robust observability. Crucially, you will also pioneer our "coding/dev agent knowledge management" initiatives: designing bespoke systems that extract and persist personal developer context across hosts and agents to create a highly augmented, agent-assisted engineering environment.

Responsibilities

• Extreme Co-Design Environments: Build, standardize, and maintain development and research environments tailored for a highly diverse team spanning software, physics, and silicon engineering.
• Agentic Dev Knowledge Management: Architect 0-to-1 systems for personal developer knowledge extraction and cross-host persistence, laying the groundwork for highly context-aware, AI-assisted coding workflows.
• Core DevEx & Platform Support: Own CI/CD pipelines, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), and observability across our engineering stack.
• Engineering Standardization: Promote and enforce best engineering practices across multi-disciplinary pods. Ensure high velocity and reliability without stifling research agility

Minimum Qualifications

• Education: BS in Computer Science or equivalent practical experience.
• Experience: 5+ years of experience in software engineering, platform engineering, or Developer Experience (DevEx).
• Programming & Scripting: Strong programming proficiency in Python, coupled with advanced shell scripting (Bash, etc.) for robust automation.
• Infrastructure & Orchestration: Deep expertise in Linux/Unix environments. Hands-on experience with containerization (Docker) and container orchestration, specifically Kubernetes (K8s).
• DevOps & Cloud: Proven track record of designing and managing CI/CD pipelines and deploying to major cloud environments (OCI, AWS, GCP, or Azure).
• Data Fundamentals: Solid understanding of database architectures and storage solutions to support stateful applications.
• Agentic Workflow: Experience with or strong interest in "agentic code development" (e.g., utilizing AI coding assistants, automating engineering workflows with AI).

Preferred Qualifications

• Agentic Orchestration: Familiarity with LLM orchestration frameworks (e.g., LangChain, LlamaIndex) and experience building internal LLM-powered applications.
• Vector Storage: Hands-on experience with Vector Databases (e.g., Pinecone, Weaviate, Milvus) for semantic search and context retrieval.
• Infrastructure as Code: Strong experience with IaC tools, particularly Terraform.
• Observability: Deep background in setting up observability and monitoring stacks (e.g., Databricks, Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog).
• Security: Expertise in secrets management (e.g., HashiCorp Vault, AWS Secrets Manager) and robust IAM policy design.
• Internal Tools: Prior experience in internal application development, building developer portals (e.g., Backstage), or knowledge management systems.

Why Join Us?

• The Mission: Redefine computing for the next 50 years by solving the fundamental energy limitation of AI at a global scale.
• The Impact: Shape the company's future as a foundational team member. Enjoy massive ownership and an outsized opportunity to drive change.
• The Challenge: Dive into deeply complex, intellectually stimulating, and unsolved problems at the cutting edge of multiple, converging fields—you will be defining the future of AI compute.
• The Perks: A comprehensive package including competitive salary, significant equity, best-in-class health benefits, 401k matching, truly unlimited PTO, and complimentary meals when working from our Palo Alto office.