Software Engineer, Agent (New Grad 2027)

Engg; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 140,000 - 200,000; Full time

Job summary

Sierra is building a platform to deploy AI agents that scale across industries. You will design and deliver production-grade AI agents and own the full life cycle from pilot to deployment, iterating based on real-world feedback.

You will partner with enterprises and startups, shaping Sierra's core platform and ensuring solutions meet customer needs with fast, reliable delivery.

Qualifications

• Experience building and scaling end-to-end production systems.
• Strong technical problem-solving skills in fast-changing environments.
• Builder mindset with high agency and ability to ship.
• Comfort working directly with customers to understand needs.
• Excellent communication across technical and non-technical audiences.

Responsibilities

• Design and deliver production-grade AI agents in production environments.
• Drive the Agent Development Life Cycle from pilot to deployment and iteration.
• Partner with large enterprises and startups to deploy AI agents at scale.
• Build the future of Sierra's platform guided by customer feedback and collaboration.

Skills

Production systems

Technical problem solving

Customer-facing

Communication

Tools

React

TypeScript

Go

Job description

ABOUT US

At Sierra, we’re building a platform to enable every company in the world to build better, more human customer experiences with AI. We partner with industry leaders such as SoftBank, Uber, Rivian, CLEAR, and Sutter Health. We are primarily an in‑person company based in San Francisco, with growing offices across North America, Europe, and Asia. We are guided by a set of values that are at the core of our actions and define our culture: Trust, Customer Obsession, Craftsmanship, Intensity, and Family. These values are the foundation of our work, and we are committed to upholding them in everything we do. Our co‑founders are Bret Taylor https://www.linkedin.com/in/brettaylor/ and Clay Bavor https://www.linkedin.com/in/claybavor/. Bret currently serves as Board Chair of OpenAI. Previously, he was co‑CEO of Salesforce (which had acquired the company he founded, Quip) and CTO of Facebook. Bret was also one of Google's earliest product managers and co‑creator of Google Maps. Before founding Sierra, Clay spent 18 years at Google, where he most recently led Google Labs. Earlier, he started and led Google’s AR/VR effort, Project Starline, and Google Lens. Before that, Clay led the product and design teams for Google Workspace.

WHAT YOU’LL DO

• Design and deliver production‑grade AI agents https://sierra.ai/blog/meet-the-ai-agent-engineer: You'll build and ship highly performant, reliable, and intuitive AI agents that are central, mission‑critical and drive revenue directly to Sierra's growth. These aren't prototypes—they are powerful, scalable systems running in production environments across industries like finance, healthcare, and commerce.
• Drive the Agent Development Life Cycle https://sierra.ai/blog/agent-development-life-cycle (ADLC): You'll have complete ownership and autonomy from initial pilot through deployment and continuous iteration. You'll be responsible for building, tuning, and evolving AI agents in production environments, defining the standard for ADLC best practices along the way.
• Partner with large enterprises and cutting‑edge startups: You’ll work directly with leaders at some of the world’s largest enterprises to understand their most pressing business challenges, and build AI agents that transform how they operate at scale. You'll also partner with the most cutting‑edge startups in Silicon Valley, embedding AI agents across their entire business stack to drive innovation and efficiency.
• Build the future of the platform: Your direct work with customers will guide the evolution of Sierra's core platform. You'll surface unmet needs, prototype new tools and features, and collaborate with research, product, and platform to shape the future of AI agent development and Sierra's product.

EXAMPLE PROJECTS

• Design and build AI agents for large telecommunications and media companies that consistently outperform human agents in managing subscription churn
• Develop and refine AI agents capable of navigating complex customer interactions, like troubleshooting a broken device and personalizing product recommendations
• Create generalizable AI agent frameworks tailored for industry‑specific use cases. See some examples in our financial services blog https://sierra.ai/blog/five‑ways‑to‑use‑ai‑agents‑financial‑services!
• Facilitate design partnerships for new product initiatives, such as new agent architectures, self‑service capabilities, and generative agent development
• Experiment with the latest voice models and figure out how to integrate them at scale to enterprise‑grade customers

WHAT YOU'LL BRING

• Experience building and scaling end‑to‑end production systems
• Strong technical problem‑solving skills, especially in fast‑changing, ambiguous environments
• A builder and tinkerer’s mindset with high agency - you find creative ways to overcome obstacles and ship
• Comfort working directly with customers to understand their needs and solve real‑world problems
• Excellent communication skills - clear, direct, and persuasive across technical and non‑technical audiences

EVEN BETTER...

• Experience building or deploying AI/LLM systems in production
• Have been a founder or founding engineer - you know what it means to balance craft, ownership, and speed
• Familiarity with tools that power today's AI agents: eval frameworks, agent tooling, RAG pipelines, and prompt engineering
• Prior experience with React, TypeScript, and/or Go - Previous roles where you interfaced with customers or led technical projects with external stakeholders

OUR VALUES

• Trust: We build trust with our customers with our accountability, empathy, quality, and responsiveness. We build trust in AI by making it more accessible, safe, and useful. We build trust with each other by showing up for each other professionally and personally, creating an environment that enables all of us to do our best work.
• Customer Obsession: We deeply understand our customers’ business goals and relentlessly focus on driving outcomes, not just technical milestones. Everyone at the company knows and spends time with our customers. When our customer is having an issue, we drop everything and fix it.
• Craftsmanship: We get the details right, from the words on the page to the system architecture. We have good taste. When we notice something isn’t right, we take the time to fix it. We are proud of the products we produce. We continuously self‑reflect to continuously self‑improve.
• Intensity: We know that we don't have the luxury of patience. We play to win. We care about our product being the best, and when it isn’t, we fix it. When we fail, we talk about it openly and without blame so we succeed the next time.
• Family: We know that balance and intensity are compatible, and we model it in our actions and processes. We are the best technology company for parents. We support and respect each other and celebrate each other’s personal and professional