Senior Software Engineer, Applied AI

Teachstone; Charlottesville (VA); On-site; USD 160,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Fair, Competitive Pay

Salary Range: $160k-$180k

Comprehensive benefits

Job summary

Teachstone is seeking a Senior Software Engineer, Applied AI, to turn prioritized AI opportunities into secure, reliable production capabilities. You will lead the design and deployment of AI-enabled products and internal tools, while advancing responsible AI practices across the engineering organization.

You will partner with Product Management, evaluate feasibility and risk, and guide choices among models, platforms, and vendors.

Qualifications

• At least 5 years of experience as a professional software engineer.
• Experience taking applied-AI from experimentation into production, including model integration and monitoring.
• Experience evaluating and integrating AI models or services and explaining value, cost, and risk.
• Deep proficiency in at least one modern programming language and ability to learn across stacks.
• Experience building production web applications using modern frontend and server-side frameworks.
• Experience using AI-assisted development tools responsibly.

Responsibilities

• Lead design, prototyping, implementation, deployment, and operation of secure, scalable AI-enabled systems.
• Evaluate AI opportunities with stakeholders and balance feasibility, risk, and value.
• Translate responsible AI principles into system requirements and governance.
• Establish reusable architectures, patterns, and tooling for AI-enabled software.
• Guide model choices and build-vs-buy decisions considering cost and maintainability.
• Define success metrics and monitor production data to improve AI systems.
• Share patterns and guidance on AI-assisted development across teams.

Skills

Senior software engineer

AI production experience

Applied AI integration

System design and security

Observability & monitoring

Tools

React

TanStack Start

Ruby on Rails

Spring MVC

AI development tools

Job description

Role summary

Teachstone supports great teaching by helping educators understand and improve classroom interactions. Our technology must be reliable, secure, scalable, and responsive to the needs of the educators and organizations we serve.

The Senior Software Engineer, Applied AI is a senior individual contributor responsible for turning prioritized AI opportunities into secure, reliable, responsible, and sustainable production capabilities. The role also contributes to advancing Engineering's effective and responsible use of AI-assisted software development practices.

Strategic responsibilities

• Partner with Product Management and relevant stakeholders to evaluate and prioritize AI opportunities that address customer and organizational needs, contributing technical judgment about feasibility, risk, and whether AI is the appropriate approach.
• Lead the technical design, prototyping, implementation, deployment, and operation of secure, reliable, and scalable AI-enabled products and internal tools.
• Translate Teachstone's responsible AI principles and policies into system requirements and engineering practices, including appropriate evaluation, data protection, risk mitigation, monitoring, and human oversight.
• Establish reusable architectures, implementation patterns, tools, and documentation that enable Teachstone to develop and maintain AI-enabled systems sustainably.
• Guide choices among models, platforms, vendors, and build-versus-buy options by balancing customer and staff needs with quality, cost, risk, performance, maintainability, and governance requirements.
• Define measures of success and use production data, evaluations, and stakeholder feedback to improve the quality, effectiveness, and efficiency of AI-enabled systems over time.
• Contribute to Engineering's effective and responsible use of AI-assisted development tools by sharing practical patterns, lessons learned, and guidance with peers.

People and partnership development

Build AI literacy across Teachstone by mentoring others and helping cross-functional partners understand AI's capabilities, limitations, effective uses, and situations in which other approaches are better suited.

Stewardship and organizational impact

Guide teams toward approved and preferred AI services, helping Teachstone adopt AI consistently, securely, responsibly, and in alignment with organizational priorities.

Qualities that support success

• Adaptability, sound judgment, and a strong learning orientation in a rapidly changing AI and organizational landscape, including openness to feedback and willingness to revise assumptions.
• A practical, outcome-oriented mindset that connects technical decisions to meaningful outcomes for customers and staff.
• A curiosity-first approach that seeks context, listens to differing perspectives, and develops shared understanding before recommending or implementing solutions.
• Clear, thoughtful communication, including the ability to make complex technical concepts accessible and build alignment among people with different backgrounds and levels of AI expertise.
• Ownership and follow-through, with the judgment to surface risks, navigate ambiguity, and balance experimentation and speed with reliability and long-term sustainability.
• Other duties as assigned.

Technical qualifications

Required:

• At least 5 years of experience as a professional software engineer
• Demonstrated senior-level software engineering expertise designing, building, testing, deploying, and operating secure, reliable production systems, with sound judgment across privacy, scalability, data flow, observability, and operational cost.
• Hands-on experience taking applied-AI capabilities from experimentation into production, including model integration, prompt and context design, evaluation, monitoring, safeguards, and integration with broader software platforms.
• Experience evaluating and integrating AI models or services, with the ability to explain technical choices in terms of customer and staff value, quality, cost, risk, performance, and maintainability.
• Deep proficiency in at least one modern programming language, along with demonstrated ability to learn and work effectively across languages, codebases, and technology stacks.
• Experience building and maintaining production web applications using modern frontend and server-side frameworks and libraries.
• Experience using AI-assisted development tools effectively and responsibly in day-to-day software engineering work.

Preferred:

• Experience with one or more technologies in Teachstone's current stack, including React, TanStack Start, Ruby on Rails, and Spring MVC.
• Experience working in both dynamically and statically typed programming languages.
• Experience evaluating or integrating multiple commercial or open-source AI models, platforms, or service providers.
• Experience establishing reusable engineering patterns, evaluation practices, or observability for AI-enabled systems.
• Experience sharing AI-assisted development practices or helping peers adopt new engineering tools and workflows.

What We Offer:

• Fair, Competitive Pay: We ensure equal pay for equal work, using consistent salary bands based on market benchmarks, reviewed annually. Prior salaries, negotiation skills, or fear of conflict don't influence your pay.
• Salary Range: $160,000-$180,000 determined by your experience, skills and internal equity.
• Comprehensive benefits:Medical/dental, 401(k), PTO, insurance, development opportunities. Details provided at offer.Eligibility depends on your role and employment status.

At Teachstone, we encourage all individuals to apply and bring their unique perspectives to our team. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, sex, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, protected veteran status, disability, age, or any other characteristic protected by law. We value the different experiences and ideas our team members bring and believe they are essential to solving complex challenges and driving our mission forward.