Product Engineer: Open Source AI for Science

University of California, Berkeley; Berkeley (CA); On-site; USD 105,000 - 155,000; Full time

Job summary

University of California, Berkeley's Lightcone team seeks Product Engineers to advance AI-assisted scientific research. You will merge research, software engineering, and open source practices to build agentic AI systems, collaborating with senior researchers and industry partners.

You will design reusable frontend components, contribute to open source projects, and lead projects in a diverse interdisciplinary environment while aligning with UC Berkeley policies and standards.

Qualifications

• Advanced Python programming skills.
• Fluency with agentic AI and LLM coding agents.
• Strong visual and interaction design craft.
• Experience with Git and CI/CD workflows.
• Ability to scope and deliver across interdisciplinary teams.
• Excellent project leadership and management.

Responsibilities

• Applies advanced software and product design concepts to plan, design, develop, modify, debug, deploy, and evaluate highly complex interface, software and/or infrastructure solutions for agentic AI systems.
• Works with domain scientists to identify friction in their research workflows; conducts user research and usability testing; translates findings into software requirements.
• Analyzes existing open source software or designs interaction patterns; establishes reusable frontend components and visual language; applies open source standards.
• Prepares and approves or obtains approval for user and developer documentation; sets technical requirements for software specifications; communicates requirements to interdisciplinary teams.
• Contributes to and supports maintenance of Lightcone's open source projects; issue triage, code/documentation review, mentoring, CI testing, release management.
• Develops project plans as part of an interdisciplinary team; delivers tasks and communicates progress.

Skills

Python

Agentic AI / LLM coding agents

Visual design

Software development & CI

Communication & leadership

Deployment planning

Problem solving

Interdisciplinary collaboration

Self-motivation

Education

Bachelor's degree in related area

Tools

Git

GitHub Actions

Job description

University of California, Berkeley's Lightcone team seeks Product Engineers to advance AI-assisted scientific research. You will merge research, software engineering, and open source practices to build agentic AI systems, collaborating with senior researchers and industry partners.

You will design reusable frontend components, contribute to open source projects, and lead projects in a diverse interdisciplinary environment while aligning with UC Berkeley policies and standards.