Senior Software Engineer

Gilder Search Group; Raleigh, Northern (NC, KY); Hybrid; USD 150,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical (employee 100% covered)

PTO and paid holidays

401(k) with 4% match

Competitive salary plus commission

Team-building events

Job summary

Gilder Search Group represents a leading CPaaS application company seeking a Senior Software Engineer to advance AI-accelerated development across Voice, Messaging, and Platform Services. You will shape how AI tools are used in production while maintaining high reliability and security.

Join a small, senior team in Raleigh, NC with a hybrid setup. You will influence tooling, code generation, and agent-driven automation, helping the engineering org adopt AI-native workflows and scale velocity

Qualifications

• 6+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• Fluency with AI coding tools and opinions on workflows.
• Strong fundamentals: data structures, system design, testing, and security.
• Hands-on experience building and operating AI agents.
• Comfort with a modern backend language/framework and RESTful API design.
• Strong written communication for a distributed team.
• Onsite in Raleigh, NC Wednesdays and Thursdays; visa sponsorship not available.
• Nice to have: telecom protocols (SIP, SMPP) or carrier integration experience.
• Nice to have: production-grade agents with failure modes and guardrails.

Responsibilities

• Build and ship features across Voice, Messaging, and Platform Services (APIs, routing logic, carrier integrations, messaging pipelines).
• Use AI coding assistants daily and help teammates gain fluency.
• Evaluate and recommend AI tools and workflows for the wider team, shaping best practices and guardrails.
• Build and run AI agents that automate real engineering work with guardrails and human review.
• Integrate AI-assisted development into CI/CD, code review, and QA without compromising reliability or security.
• Rotate through weekly on-call for production systems carrying live traffic.
• Collaborate with product management on technical scoping and tradeoffs.
• Document decisions and workflows clearly for tooling adoption.

Skills

Node.js

Python

Go

Java

RESTful API design

AI coding tools

Communication

Tools

Claude Code

Codex

GitHub Copilot

Cursor

Job description

Senior Software Engineer, AI-Accelerated Development

The engineers who define how AI gets used in production, not just how it gets talked about, are about to become the most valuable people on any engineering team. This role is for one of them.

Company Snapshot:

Our client is a cloud communications API platform (CPaaS) that powers voice and text messaging for more than 1,500 companies, ranging from contact centers to fintech platforms to mobile carriers. Their lineup spans voice APIs, SMS/MMS messaging, RCS for Business, branded calling tools, and bring-your-own-carrier (BYOC) options, engineered around carrier redundancy, compliance, and U.S.-based support. Their customers depend on this team to make sure every call and text gets where it's going.

The Mandate:

This team is looking for a Senior Engineer who has already put in serious hours with AI-assisted development, someone who knows precisely where these tools accelerate work and where they quietly introduce risk, and who can pass that judgment on to others. You'll build across the Voice, Messaging, and Platform Services stack while helping define how the broader engineering org adopts AI-native workflows, from code generation through agent-driven automation. Shipping features is only part of it; raising the whole team's velocity and quality bar through smart tooling is the rest.

Where You'll Make an Impact:

• Build and ship features across Voice, Messaging, and Platform Services (APIs, routing logic, carrier integrations, messaging pipelines)
• Use AI coding assistants (Claude Code, Codex, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, or similar) daily, and help teammates build that same fluency
• Evaluate and recommend AI tools and workflows for the wider engineering team, shaping internal best practices and guardrails
• Build and run AI agents that automate real engineering and operational work (testing, monitoring, incident triage, migrations, documentation), with proper guardrails and human review
• Help integrate AI-assisted development into CI/CD, code review, and QA without putting reliability or security at risk
• Rotate through weekly on-call for production systems carrying live voice and messaging traffic
• Work directly with product management on technical scoping, estimation, and tradeoffs
• Document decisions and workflows clearly, including for tooling the team adopts

What You Bring to the Table:

• 6+ years of professional software engineering experience, ideally backend/API work, telecom/CPaaS, or high-reliability distributed systems
• Genuine daily fluency with AI coding tools, with real opinions on specific workflows and prompting techniques, and where these tools fall short
• Strong fundamentals: you correct AI-generated code rather than rubber-stamping it, backed by real depth in data structures, system design, testing, and security
• Hands-on experience building and operating AI agents (multi-step or tool-using agents via frameworks like Claude Agent SDK, LangChain, or similar), beyond single-shot prompting
• Comfort with a modern backend language/framework (Node.js, Python, Go, or Java) and RESTful API design; this team runs primarily on Node with some Python
• Strong written communication for a distributed team
• Able to be onsite in Raleigh, NC Wednesdays and Thursdays each week; this role cannot sponsor work visas
• Nice to have: telecom protocols (SIP, SMPP), messaging standards (SMS/MMS/RCS), or carrier integration experience
• Nice to have: experience running agents in production, not just prototypes, including failure modes, cost/latency tradeoffs, and safety guardrails

The Perks:

• Medical (employee 100% covered), plus dental and vision for you and your family
• Generous PTO and 10+ paid company holidays
• 401(k) with a 4% match
• Competitive salary plus commission
• Team-building events, volunteer days, and a genuinely collaborative culture

Why This Role, Why Now:

• Real infrastructure, real stakes: your code carries actual calls and texts for real customers
• A front-row seat in the fast-growing CPaaS space
• A small, senior team with genuine visibility into the product roadmap
• The chance to shape how an entire engineering org works with AI, not just use the tools
• Genuinely open-ended career path from here
• Hybrid setup in Raleigh, onsite Wednesday and Thursday