Staff AI Engineer - USA

Podium; United States; Remote; USD 180,000 - 280,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Life insurance and disability coverage

Paid maternity/paternity leave

Fertility benefits

Generous vacation and 4-day summer hol

Excellent health benefits

Job summary

Podium is seeking a Staff AI Engineer to build and scale an AI Agent platform that autonomously handles millions of conversations monthly across channels. You will design and deliver software enabling local businesses to manage complex interactions automatically, booking more appointments and serving customers efficiently.

In this role you will own architecture, implementation, deployment, and ongoing reliability, collaborating with engineers, product managers, and AI/ML scientists to deliver

Qualifications

• 10+ years of professional software engineering with Go, Python, or Elixir.
• 1+ years deploying AI agents in production interacting with tools, APIs, or real workflows.
• Proven success in distributed or high-throughput systems.
• Strong problem-solving and ability to navigate ambiguity in large-scale systems.
• Excellent communication across teams.
• Willingness to work across the full stack where needed.
• Thrives in a fast-paced environment with shifting priorities.

Responsibilities

• Build and scale the AI Agent platform to support high-volume, real-time workflows.
• Design and implement APIs, services, and infrastructure for multi-turn, cross-channel interactions.
• Own architecture, implementation, deployment, and reliability lifecycle.
• Prototype rapidly with live data and improve system performance and UX.
• Implement observability and best-practice reliability in production.
• Collaborate with engineers, PMs, and AI/ML scientists to deliver end-to-end features.

Skills

Go / Python / Elixir

AI agents in production

Distributed systems

Communication

Full-stack mindset

Ambiguity navigation

Cross-team collaboration

High-throughput design

Tools

LangGraph

CrewAI

AutoGen

Job description

At Podium, we bring AI Employees to local businesses that turn every conversation into revenue. Trusted by 60,000+ businesses across Auto, Home Services, and Aesthetics, Podium captures and converts leads 24/7, driving both new business and repeat customers.

In under 24 months, we crossed $100M in AI Agent ARR, scaling 300% year-over-year. During this time, we’ve deployed 10,000 AI employees to empower real business outcomes for our customers. Podium is building what we believe will be the most impactful AI employee ecosystem for local business.

Podium has been recognized as the Best AI Implementation by Inc. Magazine, highlighted by OpenAI for building revenue-driving AI Agents, and awarded the #1 AI Agent for Business Operations by G2.

Our operating principles guide daily behavior and ensure we hire people who will thrive at Podium. If you’re hungry for growth, aligned to our operating principles, and ready to get to work, you won’t find a better place to learn and accelerate your career.

Staff AI Engineer

The Role

We are looking for a talented Staff AI Engineer to help build and scale our AI Agent platform—a powerful system that autonomously interacts with customers, handling millions of conversations every month. In this role, you’ll design and deliver the software that enables local businesses to manage complex customer interactions automatically, book more appointments, and serve their customers more effectively across multiple channels (e.g., voice, SMS, chat).

If you thrive in fast-paced, highly iterative environments, enjoy solving complex distributed systems challenges, and want to see your work drive immediate business impact, this role is for you!

What you will be doing

• Build and scale the AI Agent platform — enabling high-volume, real-time conversational workflows that deliver accuracy and low latency at scale.
• Design and implement APIs, services, and infrastructure that power multi-turn, cross-channel customer interactions.
• Own the full lifecycle: architecture, implementation, deployment, and ongoing reliability.
• Prototype rapidly, iterate with live interaction data, and continuously improve system performance and user experience.
• Implement observability, monitoring, and operational best practices to ensure reliability in production, focusing on agent accuracy and latency.
• Collaborate with engineers, product managers, and AI/ML scientists to deliver end-to-end features that power critical business outcomes.

What you should have

• 10+ years of professional software engineering experience with at least one modern language such as Go, Python, or Elixir.
• 1+ years of professional experience deploying and maintaining AI agents in production environments that interact with tools, APIs, or real-world workflows.
• Proven success designing and maintaining distributed or high-throughput systems.
• Strong problem-solving ability and comfort navigating ambiguity in large-scale systems.
• Excellent communication skills and the ability to work effectively across teams.
• A willingness to work across the entire stack—from infrastructure to APIs to user-facing components—wherever the problem needs solving.
• Ability to thrive in a fast-paced environment with shifting priorities.

What we hope you have

• 2+ years of professional experience deploying and maintaining AI agents in production environments that interact with tools, APIs, or real-world workflows.
• Practical experience designing and implementing evaluations for LLM behavior — including accuracy, safety, reliability, and cost monitoring.
• Strong understanding of prompt design, context engineering, and guardrail strategies for dependable, interpretable agent behavior.
• Experience with modern agent frameworks such as LangGraph, CrewAI, or AutoGen, including multi-step reasoning, memory, and orchestration patterns.
• Hands‑on experience with fine‑tuning and data curation for improving model performance.

Why you’ll love working here:

• Podium is the best place to work to:
  • Join the leaders in AI agents
  • Unlock career-defining growth
  • Build with world‑class talent
  • Make a real impact on local business

Benefits:

• Open and transparent culture
• Life insurance, long and short‑term disability coverage
• Paid maternity and paternity leave
• Fertility Benefits
• Generous vacation time, plus three 4-day summer holiday weekends
• Excellent medical, dental, and vision benefits
• 401k Plan with company matching
• Bi‑annual swag drops with cool Podium gear and apparel

Podium is an equal opportunity employer. Podium provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, disability, genetic information, marital status or veteran status.