Senior / Staff Software Engineer

Impruve; Chicago (IL); Hybrid; USD 150,000 - 200,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid in-person/remote schedule

Chicago office flexibility

Fast, outcome-focused hiring

Job summary

Impruve, Inc. is seeking a Senior / Staff Software Engineer to partner with wealth-management clients and deploy AI-powered systems in production. You will own engagements from scoping to delivery, embedding with client teams to ensure real business impact.

The role requires strong engineering fundamentals and 5+ years of hands-on experience, with fluency across data, infrastructure, backend, and AI. Hybrid work with a Chicago-based office supports collaboration.

Qualifications

• Strong engineering fundamentals; design and ship reliable systems.
• 5+ years of hands-on engineering experience building production systems.
• Cross-domain fluency across data, infrastructure, backend, and AI.

Responsibilities

• Embed with client teams to scope, design, and ship AI-powered systems.
• Own engagements end-to-end from scoping to delivery and client relationship management.
• Develop data pipelines, AI tooling, and production-grade software across stacks.

Skills

Engineering fundamentals

Cross-domain fluency

AI-native mindset

Client-facing communication

Outcome-oriented

Job description

Impruve is a boutique forward-deployed engineering firm that helps wealthmanagement firms get real business results from AI. We embed directly with our clients to build production data pipelines, AI tools, custom software, and compliance infrastructure for top-tier firms managing billions in client assets. We have more demand than we can currently serve, and we’re growing the team to meet it.

Our founders previously built and exited Packback, an AI company that served more than 3 million users.

We operate with the speed of a small startup and the rigor of a top firm. We default to “why not?” when problems look impossible, ship pragmatic solutions to the problems that matter most, and measure ourselves by the outcomes we deliver. If you want to work on the leading edge of AI, building systems that change how businesses actually run, Impruve is a great place to do it.

Why This Role

Most wealth management firms want to bring AI into their business, and they have access to the frontier models and the tooling around them. What’s missing is the engineering capability to deploy AI effectively and in a compliant manner. That’s the gap Impruve fills, so wealth managers can spend more of their time improving the lives of their clients.

You’d own client engagements end-to-end, from scoping the work with the client through architecting and shipping the system. This role is for engineers who are excited about getting hands‑on experience deploying AI in production.

The Role

The Senior / Staff Software Engineer at Impruve is an outcome-driven builder, with the exact title depending on your background and experience. You’ll partner directly with clients to design and ship AI-powered systems that solve real business problems.

What You’ll Do

• Forward-Deployed Engineering: Embed directly with client teams and own engagements end-to-end: scoping the problem, shipping the system, and managing the client relationship. You’d typically run multiple client engagements in parallel.
• AI-Native Building: AI coding tools are table stakes. You’re fluent with agentic development workflows (spec-driven development, custom agent skills, and the frameworks emerging around them) and you continuously refine how AI multiplies your output.
• Full-Stack Engineering: Work across data engineering (pipelines, transforms), AI engineering (RAG/graphs, evals, memory, agent workflows), and the backend and frontend work that ties it together so it holds up in production.
• Systems Design: Architect platforms that change how clients operate. You’re building reliable, observable systems with clean UX that keeps humans in the loop.
• Shape the Firm: Each engineer here has a real hand in how we run engagements and how Impruve scales to become the leading forward-deployed engineering firm in wealth management. You’d be instrumental in building our practice.

What You’ll Bring to the Team

• Strong Engineering Fundamentals: You design and ship reliable systems. You turn ambiguous problems into clean production code.
• 5+ Years of Hands-On Engineering Experience: Most of it building and operating production systems.
• Cross-Domain Fluency: You move comfortably between data, infrastructure, backend, and AI. You don’t need to be an expert in all four, but you can make sound calls and own an engagement without constant escalation.
• AI-Native Mindset: You’re excited about AI as a force multiplier for engineering. You actively experiment, form opinions about what’s working, and bring new techniques back to the team.
• Comfortable in the Room: You hold your own in front of clients. You can explain technical concepts without oversimplifying or hiding behind jargon.
• Bias for Outcomes: You judge your own work by what changed for the client, not by what you produced.

How We Work

• Why Not? We act with pragmatic boldness in the face of challenges that others shy away from, replacing knee-jerk “no way” thinking with curious “why not?” problem-solving.
• Simplest Solution to the Most Important Problem. We cut through noise to find the root problem, then solve it as simply and elegantly as possible.
• Impact > Activity. We focus on what drives real impact, not what looks impressive. Activity is easy. Results are what matter.
• Compound Impruvement (1.01^365). We believe in the power of small, consistent improvements. Long-term success comes from compounding 1% gains, not dramatic leaps.
• Trains on Tracks on Time (T3). At the frontier of innovation, we’re ruthlessly organized. We operate with systematic clarity, predictable rhythms, and consistent execution.

Compensation

$150,000 to $200,000 all-cash compensation.

Our Workplace

We work on a hybrid in-person / remote schedule from our Chicago office. Fully remote is on the table for exceptional candidates, but hybrid is the default. Close collaboration is part of how we build.

Hiring Process

We respect your time. We keep the hiring process tight and decide quickly:

• Team interview with the founders, including a working session on a realistic engineering problem.
• Decision and offer.