Senior/Staff Software Engineer

Vectara; Oregon; Hybrid; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Vectara is seeking a Senior/Staff Platform Software Engineer to build and scale the core infrastructure powering our AI agent platform. You’ll design robust services, automate pipelines, and focus on reliability and performance.

You will lead code reviews and architecture discussions, mentor team members, and work across GCP/AWS/Azure to deploy scalable backend systems using Docker, Kubernetes, and IaC tools.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of backend/software engineering with a platform focus.
• Proficiency in Java and Python.
• Experience with cloud environments (GCP/AWS/Azure/Onprem).
• Strong understanding of containerization and orchestration (Docker/Kubernetes).
• Experience with infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, Pulumi).
• Experience with observability tools (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK/EFK).
• Experience with ML platforms or production ML workloads.
• Experience designing and operating distributed systems.
• Familiarity with data infrastructure (Kafka, Spark, Airflow).

Responsibilities

• Proficiency in AI-assisted coding; able to manage multiple AI agents and tasks efficiently.
• Lead code, system design, and architecture reviews while mentoring teammates.
• Design, implement, and maintain scalable backend services and platform components.
• Drive automation, CI/CD, and monitoring/alerting pipelines.
• Collaborate with product engineering and research teams to deploy ML/NLP workloads.
• Improve system reliability, scalability, and developer experience.
• Contribute to architecture and infrastructure decisions as the platform scales.
• Promote best practices in code quality, testing, and DevOps culture across the team.

Skills

Backend systems

Java

Python

Team mentoring

DevOps culture

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

GCP

AWS

Azure

Onprem

Terraform

Pulumi

Prometheus

Grafana

ELK/EFK

Kafka

Spark

Airflow

Job description

Role Overview:Vectara is seeking a Senior/Staff Platform Software Engineer with strong experience in backend development and modern DevOps practices. In this role, you’ll work on building and scaling the core infrastructure that powers our AI agent platform. You’ll help design robust services and scalable systems, with a focus on automation, observability, reliability, and performance.

Key Responsibilities:

• Proficiency in AI-assisted coding; able to do multiple tasks at once and manage AI agents to execute quickly and thoughtfully.
• Lead code, system design, and architecture reviews while teaching and mentoring team members.
• Design, implement, and maintain scalable and secure backend services and platform components.
• Drive infrastructure automation, CI/CD, and monitoring/alerting pipelines.
• Collaborate with product engineering and research teams to deploy, scale, and optimize ML/NLP workloads.
• Lead initiatives to improve system reliability, scalability, and developer experience.
• Contribute to architecture and infrastructure decisions as we scale our platform.
• Champion best practices in code quality, testing, and DevOps culture across the team.

Qualifications:

• 5+ years of experience as a software engineer with a focus on backend systems and platform engineering.
• Proficiency in Java and Python.
• Deep experience with all computing environments (GCP, AWS, Onprem, or Azure).
• Strong understanding of containerization and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes).
• Experience with infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, Pulumi, etc.)
• Experience with observability tools (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK/EFK, etc.).
• Experience working on ML platforms or supporting ML workloads in production.
• Experience designing and operating distributed systems.
• Familiarity with data infrastructure (e.g., Kafka, Spark, Airflow).