Senior AI-First Full-Stack Engineer

Essex Property Trust; Irvine (CA); On-site; USD 123,000 - 153,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical insurance

Dental & Vision coverage

Paid parental leave

401k employer match

Excellence rewards

Wellness programs

12 paid holidays

15 PTO days

Housing discount

Job summary

Essex Property Trust is seeking a Senior Application Developer to design, build, and support complex applications in a serverless, cloud-native setting. You’ll own architecture, tests, and code reviews while AI agents generate much of the code.

You’ll work with AWS and Vercel, apply modern UI/API/DB patterns, and guide AI-assisted implementation, collaborating with business stakeholders and scrum teams to deliver scalable, secure solutions.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, engineering or related discipline.
• 8+ years of hands-on full stack web application development across the full lifecycle: requirements, design, build, test, deployment, and support.
• Deep knowledge of software architecture and design patterns.
• Strong automated testing skills (unit, integration, end-to-end, regression).
• Proficient in capturing workable requirements from end users and business stakeholders and writing specifications clear enough for an engineer, or an AI agent, to implement without ambiguity.
• Strong code-review skills to assess AI-generated code for correctness, security, and maintainability.
• Experience with AI coding tools (Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, Cursor).
• Experience building serverless applications (AWS Lambda, Vercel) with CI/CD and DevOps practices.

Responsibilities

• Design and develop web applications for internal and external customers, using agentic AI tools to plan, implement, and iterate quickly while applying sound usability concepts.
• Build on our serverless architecture (AWS, Vercel) across front-end UI, back-end APIs, and data using low-code tools where they fit, to deliver scalable, secure, user-centric solutions.
• Work with business stakeholders to shape requirements and translate them into clear functional specifications and acceptance criteria that drive AI-assisted implementation.
• Define architecture, data models, and design patterns, and guide AI agents to implement within them.
• Own test strategy: unit, integration, and regression suites that validate AI-generated code.
• Take a lead role in code quality, security, and performance, critically reviewing AI-generated code.
• Maintain, support, and modernize existing applications, using AI to analyze, document, and refactor legacy code.
• Help lead architecture and design reviews, backlog refinement, and other scrum meetings.
• Triage and resolve production issues, and deploy changes through automated CI/CD pipelines.
• Contribute to technology best practices, including the secure, responsible use of AI tools.
• Perform other tasks as assigned.

Skills

Full-stack development

AI coding tools

Serverless architecture

SQL databases

JavaScript

HTML5 & CSS

Education

Bachelor’s degree in computer science or related field

Tools

AWS

Vercel

Claude Code

GitHub Copilot

Snowflake

PostgreSQL

SQL Server

Job description

Essex Property Trust is seeking a Senior Application Developer to design, build, and support complex applications in a serverless, cloud-native setting. You’ll own architecture, tests, and code reviews while AI agents generate much of the code.

You’ll work with AWS and Vercel, apply modern UI/API/DB patterns, and guide AI-assisted implementation, collaborating with business stakeholders and scrum teams to deliver scalable, secure solutions.