Staff Engineer, AI Strategy and Distributed Systems

Mission.dev; Mission, Northern (KS, KY); Hybrid; USD 150,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Mission.dev, a remote-first technology company, builds high-traffic digital platforms and event-driven systems with global scale. You will co-own the engineering and AI strategy for a platform that handles massive concurrency, designing workflows to accelerate AI adoption and setting the bar for distributed architectures.

As Staff Engineer, you will drive development workflows, lead cross-team technical initiatives, and ensure security, compliance, and reliability while advancing agentic,

Qualifications

• 10+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• 6+ years building scalable distributed systems in high-growth environments.
• Proven track record driving AI adoption or implementing agentic systems.
• Experience leading roadmaps and architectural decisions for high-traffic platforms.
• Ability to coach engineers and lead cross-team technical initiatives.

Responsibilities

• Define and execute technical strategies to support platforms with massive global traffic and high concurrency.
• Establish architectural guardrails to translate high-level product visions into scalable engineering implementations.
• Resolve complex blockers and system instabilities to ensure seamless team execution.
• Drive AI fluency across the organization by developing internal tools, plugins, and agentic workflows.
• Redesign development workflows to enhance developer productivity, code quality, and AI-native processes.
• Lead cross-functional collaboration by coaching engineers and raising technical standards.
• Balance engineering requirements with product goals, security protocols, and compliance standards.

Skills

Distributed systems architecture

AI adoption

Technical leadership

Roadmap planning

Coaching engineers

Tools

Next.js

React.js

Node.js

AWS

Job description

Staff Engineer, AI Strategy and Distributed Systems

This remote-first technology company builds and operates high-traffic digital platforms and event-driven systems at global scale. The organization focuses on creating high-engagement online destinations while fostering a culture of technical innovation. Operating with a distributed, cloud-native infrastructure, the company prioritizes a people-centric work environment and leverages modern software practices to maintain highly available services for millions of concurrent users worldwide.

About the Role

As a Staff Engineer, you will co-own the engineering and AI strategy for a platform ranking among the most visited sites globally. You will design development workflows to accelerate AI adoption and set the technical bar for a distributed system handling massive concurrency. Your role balances high-level strategy with hands-on problem-solving, identifying and removing critical blockers that impact stability or velocity. You will drive the evolution toward agentic workflows and autonomous systems, ensuring technical decisions are stress-tested against extreme scale, security requirements, and complex architectural challenges.

What You’ll Do

• Define and execute technical strategies to support platforms with massive global traffic and high concurrency.
• Establish architectural guardrails and structures to translate high-level product visions into scalable engineering implementations.
• Resolve the most complex technical blockers and system instabilities to ensure seamless team execution.
• Drive AI fluency across the organization by developing internal tools, plugins, and agentic workflows.
• Redesign development workflows to enhance developer productivity, code quality, and AI-native processes.
• Lead cross-functional collaboration by coaching engineers and raising the technical standards across multiple teams.
• Balance engineering requirements with product goals, security protocols, and compliance standards.

What You Bring

• 10+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• 6+ years of experience building and architecting scalable distributed systems in high-growth environments.
• Proven track record of driving AI adoption or implementing agentic systems within an engineering organization.
• Experience leading technical roadmaps and architectural decisions for high-traffic platforms.
• Demonstrated ability to coach engineers and lead cross-team technical initiatives.

Nice to Haves

• Proficiency with Next.js, React.js, Node.js, and AWS.
• Background in Platform Engineering or Developer Experience (DX) teams.
• Experience developing internal libraries to improve stability or AI integration.
• Four-day work week.

About your mission

Build the engineering and AI strategy that fundamentally shifts how engineering teams work.

About the client

Technology company specializing in the building of comprehensive eCommerce platforms