Senior AI Systems Architect & Founding Engineer

Steven.com; Los Angeles (CA); On-site; USD 260,000 - 320,000; Full time

Job summary

Steven.com is building the operating system for the creator economy, an AI-driven platform designed to scale human creativity. The role is the most senior individual contributor in the Engineering and Technology Organization, owning architecture for the ITO’s hardest, highest-stakes systems and setting technical standards for the team.

Reporting to the CITO and collaborating with the VP of Engineering & Applied AI, you will shape the product’s technical depth in year one and influence product

Qualifications

• Founding engineer, staff engineer, or technical lead at a startup or high-growth company.
• CS or ML research background with production research experience.
• Published research, open source work, conference talks, or other visible engineering community contribution.
• We care less about titles, years, and pedigree, and more about the systems you can point to and defend end to end.

Responsibilities

• Own the architecture of Steven.com's most complex systems, from design through production and long-term evolution.
• Set the engineering standards, patterns, and abstractions the rest of the team builds on.
• Architect the AI-native core of the product: LLM-powered workflows, intelligent pipelines, and agentic systems that don't exist yet.
• Make the final call on high-stakes design decisions and catch systemic risk before it becomes debt or downtime.
• Mentor senior and junior engineers, raise the bar through code review and architectural conversation.
• Turn ambiguous product bets into concrete technical plans with clear tradeoffs, working directly with CITO, VP Eng, and Product.

Skills

TypeScript

React

Node.js

Python

Google Cloud/AWS

AI/ML systems

LLM applications

Distributed systems

Architectural leadership

Education

CS or ML research background

Tools

Google Cloud

AWS

Job description

Steven.com is building the operating system for the creator economy, an AI-driven platform designed to scale human creativity. The role is the most senior individual contributor in the Engineering and Technology Organization, owning architecture for the ITO’s hardest, highest-stakes systems and setting technical standards for the team.

Reporting to the CITO and collaborating with the VP of Engineering & Applied AI, you will shape the product’s technical depth in year one and influence product