Staff AI Systems Engineer – Platform & Enablement Lead

joinroot; United States; Remote; USD 189,000 - 265,000; Full time

Job summary

Root's engineering team is building AI-enabled platforms to empower insurance products across the US. As a Staff Software Engineer focused on AI, you will set technical direction, lead cross-team initiatives, and turn AI experiments into scalable capabilities across AI Platform and AI Enablement Squad.

This role may emphasize foundational platform engineering or hands-on enablement and adoption, depending on your strengths and needs.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of software engineering experience with 3+ years leading software teams.
• Proven ability to set technical direction across multiple teams.
• Strong systems and product judgment to frame ambiguous problems.
• Experience with AI/LLM technologies and responsible, scalable use.
• Depth in cloud/platform architecture and production operations, ideally including AWS, Terraform, and secure software delivery.
• Depth in hands-on AI enablement, user-centered problem discovery, and translating experiments into products or operating models.
• Ability to drive cross-team decisions, communicate complex ideas to senior technical and non-technical leaders, and develop engineers beyond your immediate team.

Responsibilities

• Set a multi-quarter technical direction for how Root builds, adopts, and improves AI-enabled systems, balancing immediate opportunities with durable investments.
• Lead cross-team initiatives from ambiguous problem framing through architecture, implementation, and measurable outcomes.
• Connect real user workflows and experiments to shared services, platform strategy, and scalable ways of working rather than one-off solutions.
• Make sound tradeoffs across security, responsible use, reliability, observability, cost, usability, and long-term maintainability.
• Align engineering and business leaders on priorities and decisions; unblock work across product engineering, data, security, infrastructure, and other partners.
• Establish feedback loops and measures that show whether AI capabilities are dependable and whether adoption improves how Root works.
• Anticipate emerging constraints, shape technical investments, and multiply your impact by mentoring engineers and technical leaders.

Skills

Team leadership

Technical direction

Cross-team collaboration

Communication to leadership

Cloud architecture

Tools

AWS

Terraform

Secure software delivery

Job description

Root's engineering team is building AI-enabled platforms to empower insurance products across the US. As a Staff Software Engineer focused on AI, you will set technical direction, lead cross-team initiatives, and turn AI experiments into scalable capabilities across AI Platform and AI Enablement Squad.

This role may emphasize foundational platform engineering or hands-on enablement and adoption, depending on your strengths and needs.