Staff AI Engineer

Franklin Fitch; Atlanta (GA); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 200,000; Full time

Job summary

Franklin Fitch is seeking a Staff Platform Engineer to build the AI-first platform that will underpin rapid growth. You will work across platform engineering, infrastructure, security, and architecture, mentoring others, and shaping reusable platform capabilities.

The role requires startup experience, hands-on engineering with ownership, and strong Azure production practice in a fast-moving environment.

Qualifications

• Experience in startup environments with ownership.
• Hands-on engineering with 4-5+ years of experience.
• Platform engineering background beyond DevOps.
• Experience taking systems into production and owning them.
• Experience across platform, infrastructure, security, DevOps and architecture.
• Built or significantly refactored a platform.
• Comfort in fast-moving, ambiguous settings.
• Experience across multiple technical problems.
• Strong Azure production experience.
• Understanding production hardening and security.
• Ability to create reusable platform capabilities.

Responsibilities

• Review existing builds and identify opportunities to improve, standardize and productize them.
• Design and build reusable, modular platform capabilities.
• Work hands-on across client delivery and internal platform development.
• Provide senior technical guidance and mentorship to junior engineers.
• Review technical specifications and guide engineers through active builds.
• Support solution design for larger and more complex customer opportunities.
• Help establish production, security and architectural best practices.
• Make customer-specific solutions more repeatable and scalable.
• Influence the technical direction of the platform as the business grows.

Skills

Startup experience

Hands-on engineering

Platform engineering

Azure

Ownership mindset

Multi-area experience

AI/ML familiarity

Job description

Up to $200,000 Base + Equity | Hybrid | 3-4 Days in Office

Build the platform behind an AI-first business

We're working with a rapidly growing AI business that is far exceeding it's revenue goal, hit its annual target ahead of schedule, and is already working with 20paying customers.

Demand is now outpacing their delivery capacity.

They're looking for a Staff Platform Engineer with genuine startup experience who wants to get in early, roll up their sleeves and help build the platform that will underpin the next stage of growth.

This isn't a role where you'll inherit a mature platform and spend your days maintaining someone else's architecture.

You’ll build it.

The opportunity

The business delivers sophisticated AI solutions across a range of customer environments. As the number and complexity of those builds continues to grow, they're looking for a senior engineer who can identify what should be standardized, what should be productized, and what needs to become part of a reusable platform.

You'll work across platform engineering, infrastructure, security, architecture and hands-on delivery, while acting as a technical mentor to the wider engineering team.

You'll have significant influence over how the platform evolves and how the engineering organization builds and delivers at scale.

This is a startup role

Previous startup experience is essential.

We're specifically looking for engineers who have worked in a startup environment where they've had to operate with ambiguity, move quickly and take ownership beyond a narrowly defined job description.

You should be comfortable with:

• Building things that don't yet exist.
• Making decisions without layers of bureaucracy.
• Working across multiple technical areas.
• Balancing speed with production quality.
• Taking ownership when things inevitably break.
• Adapting as the business, product and technical requirements change.
• Wearing multiple hats rather than staying within a rigid technical speciality.

Experience in a large enterprise environment alone won't be enough.

We're particularly interested in engineers who have joined a startup early or have played a significant role in building and scaling its technical platform.

What you’ll be doing

• Review existing internal and customer-facing builds and identify opportunities to improve, standardize and productize them.
• Design and build reusable, modular platform capabilities.
• Work hands-on across client delivery and internal platform development.
• Provide senior technical guidance and mentorship to junior engineers.
• Review technical specifications and guide engineers through active builds.
• Support solution design for larger and more complex customer opportunities.
• Help establish production, security and architectural best practices.
• Make customer-specific solutions more repeatable and scalable.
• Influence the technical direction of the platform as the business grows.

We're looking for someone who...

• Has previous experience working in a startup — this is essential.
• Is a genuinely hands-on engineer with around 4-5+ years of experience, although depth and capability matter far more than the number of years on your CV.
• Has a strong platform engineering background rather than being purely focused on DevOps.
• Has experience taking systems into production and, importantly, owning them when things break.
• Has worked across multiple areas including platform, infrastructure, security, DevOps and architecture.
• Has built a platform from scratch or significantly refactored an existing one.
• Is comfortable operating in a fast-moving, ambiguous environment.
• Has experience working across multiple technical problems rather than operating within a narrow speciality.
• Has strong experience with Azure, particularly deploying and maintaining production environments.
• Understands production hardening, security and infrastructure architecture.
• Can look beyond the immediate technical problem and recognise opportunities to create reusable capabilities.

AI isn’t optional

This is a particularly important part of the role.

You need to be obsessed with AI.

We're not looking for someone who has simply added “AI” to their CV because it is currently in demand.

You should be building with AI outside of work — whether that's personal agents, applications, experiments or simply constantly testing new models and tools.

You'll need to have strong opinions about:

• AI models and tooling
• Agentic coding
• Build management
• Multi-person agentic workflows
• Where AI engineering is heading next

You'll also need some commercial AI or agent experience.

If you've worked in a startup, enjoy operating with genuine ownership, and want to build at the intersection of AI, infrastructure, platform engineering and architecture, this could be a very interesting next step.