Senior Software & AI Systems Architect (Hybrid)

IDEO; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 130,000 - 150,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid Model

Health Benefits

401K with Employer Contribution

Parental Leave

Adoption Assistance

Fertility Assistance

Transgender Medical Assistance

Breastmilk shipment

Back-up/Dependent Care

Pet Insurance

Flexible Work

Flexible Time Off

Paid Holidays

Annual Education Stipend

Home Office Stipend

Commuter Reimbursement

Phone & Internet Reimbursement

Job summary

IDEO San Francisco seeks a Senior Software Design Lead to architect the human and technical systems behind digital products and AI experiences. You will prototype software that behaves like production systems and act as the technical voice trusted by client CTOs.

You will design with product, design and data teams, advise on tech stacks, and help craft proposals while coaching designers who prototype in code.

Qualifications

• 6-8+ years shipping production software.
• 1-2+ years as engineering lead or solutions architect.
• Deep fundamentals: data models, APIs, tradeoffs in performance, security, scale.
• Hands-on with LLMs, tools, agents, retrieval, evals.
• Experience collaborating with product, design and data.
• Strong architecture diagrams and storytelling for execs.

Responsibilities

• Collaborate with product designers and strategists on 8-12+ week engagements.
• Build early prototypes using real data and models.
• Advise executives on tech stack, APIs, and feasibility of AI initiatives.
• Design system behaviors and guardrails for humane agentic experiences.
• Create reusable starter kits and coach designers who prototype in code.
• Help shape proposals and scope technical work in business development.

Skills

6-8+ years software engineering

1-2+ years engineering lead

Systems thinking

LLMs and AI prototyping

Cross-functional collaboration

Technical storytelling

Tools

TypeScript

React

Python

Node.js

AWS

GCP

Azure

Job description

IDEO San Francisco seeks a Senior Software Design Lead to architect the human and technical systems behind digital products and AI experiences. You will prototype software that behaves like production systems and act as the technical voice trusted by client CTOs.

You will design with product, design and data teams, advise on tech stacks, and help craft proposals while coaching designers who prototype in code.