Staff Software Engineer

kadence; New York (NY); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Kadence in New York is seeking a hands-on Staff Software Engineer to shape the AI-powered product platform. You’ll design backend services for AI agents, conversations, workflows, and document processing, while continuing to write production code.

You’ll own orchestration for LLMs, improve retrieval across millions of documents, and drive performance, reliability, and cost efficiency. You’ll mentor engineers and influence direction across teams, delivering scalable, production-ready systems.

Qualifications

• Recent experience designing, building, and shipping production products or platforms in a strong product, SaaS, or technology engineering organization.
• Staff-level technical ownership: leading complex projects end to end while continuing to write production code.
• Experience designing distributed systems and operating them reliably at scale.
• Hands-on experience integrating LLMs into products; agents, tool calling, MCP, RAG, or retrieval is relevant.

Responsibilities

• Design and build backend services powering AI agents, conversations, workspaces, and document workflows.
• Develop orchestration for LLMs, tool calling, MCP, and multi-step tasks.
• Improve retrieval and knowledge systems operating across millions of documents.
• Make practical decisions around latency, reliability, observability, scalability, and model cost.
• Lead projects from design through launch and ongoing operation, mentoring engineers.

Skills

Python backend

FastAPI

PostgreSQL

AWS

LLM integration

Distributed systems

Mentorship

Tools

APIs/microservices

Job description

Lead Software Engineer (Staff Level) | AI Products & Platform

I’m partnering with a global technology company investing heavily in AI products for tax, accounting, and audit professionals. This team is building tools that help professionals work through complex documents, find relevant evidence, and complete high-stakes client work with greater speed and confidence.

It’s a small, senior team with the pace and ownership of a startup, access to a large customer base, and the resources to build for real production scale. They’re looking for a hands‑on Staff Engineer to shape the platform behind these products while continuing to write production code.

What you’ll own

• Design and build the backend services powering AI agents, conversations, workspaces, and document workflows
• Develop orchestration for LLMs, tool calling, MCP, and multi-step tasks
• Improve retrieval and knowledge systems operating across millions of documents
• Make practical decisions around latency, reliability, observability, scalability, and model cost
• Lead projects from technical design through launch and ongoing operation, while mentoring engineers and influencing direction across teams

Qualifications

• Recent experience designing, building, and shipping production products or platforms in a strong product, SaaS, or technology engineering organization
• Staff-level technical ownership: leading complex projects end to end while continuing to write production code
• Strong Python backend engineering experience, ideally with FastAPI, APIs or microservices, PostgreSQL, and AWS
• Experience designing distributed systems and operating them reliably at scale
• Hands‑on experience integrating LLMs into products; experience with agents, tool calling, MCP, RAG, or retrieval is especially relevant
• Sound judgment around performance, observability, resilience, and cost in production
• Ability to mentor engineers, make clear technical tradeoffs, and influence engineering direction across teams