Staff Software Engineer

dynamism; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 400,000 - 500,000; Full time

Job summary

Dynamism in San Francisco is hiring a Staff Software Engineer to set technical direction across data curation, research workflows, environment quality, and evaluation delivery, while remaining deeply hands-on.

You will solve cross-system problems, define shared abstractions, mentor engineers, and raise the team's judgment, balancing speed with rigor in a fast-moving, AI-forward startup backed by top investors.

Qualifications

• Strong technical generalist capable of moving across product, infra, data and research tooling.
• Experience building important systems at early-stage companies or owning outcomes with founder-level agency.
• Ability to make sound architecture decisions quickly without long planning cycles.

Responsibilities

• Set technical direction across platform, environment, data, and evaluation systems.
• Tackle the hardest cross-system problems in reliability, scale, and developer leverage.
• Define shared abstractions and architecture decisions for long-term development.
• Provide hands-on mentorship to raise team judgment and speed.

Skills

Technical generalist

Cross-domain engineering

Architecture decisions

Mentorship

Tools

Docker

AWS

Postgres

Job description

Staff Software Engineer
Full-time · San Francisco · On-site

Compensation: $400K to $500K base salary plus meaningful equity
Location: San Francisco, on-site

At Dynamism, we partner with breakout startups backed by Sequoia, a16z, and Y Combinator to help them hire engineers with founder energy, people who build fast, think like owners, and thrive in zero-to-one environments.

We're hiring for this role at an early-stage applied AI company building high-fidelity environments, tasks, data, and evaluation infrastructure that help frontier models learn reliable behavior in real work. The company works closely with frontier AI labs and enterprises, and is backed by Sequoia Capital, Menlo Ventures, BCV, and SV Angel. Its engineering-first team brings together former founders, researchers, and deeply technical builders who value speed with rigor, truth over comfort, and precision under pressure.

The Role

You will set technical direction across the platform that supports data curation, research workflows, expert collaboration, environment quality, and evaluation delivery. You will solve the hardest cross-system problems, establish the shared abstractions the company builds on, and remain deeply hands-on while raising the judgment of the whole team.

What You'll Own

• Technical direction across platform, environment, data, and evaluation systems


• The hardest cross-system problems in reliability, scale, correctness, and developer leverage


• Shared abstractions and architecture decisions that the company can build on for years


• Engineering standards that maintain research validity while the team ships in days


• Hands-on mentorship and judgment that increase the quality and speed of the whole technical team

You Might Be a Fit If You

• Are a strong technical generalist who can move across product, infrastructure, data, and research tooling


• Have built important systems at an early-stage company or owned outcomes with founder-level agency


• Can make sound architecture decisions without requiring a long planning cycle


• Use AI tools deeply and communicate clearly enough to direct multiple agents in parallel


• Move fast while protecting correctness, maintainability, and operational quality

Stack

TypeScript, Python, web systems, data tooling, Docker, AWS, Postgres, agent infrastructure, evaluation tooling

Bonus if you've:

• Founded a company or worked as an early engineer


• Built infrastructure used by researchers, data teams, or external experts


• Worked on AI safety, evaluations, post-training, or agent systems


• Set technical direction across several systems in a small engineering team

Role Details

• Compensation: $400K to $500K base salary plus meaningful equity


• Location: San Francisco, on-site


• Full-time and on-site

This role will not suit someone looking for routine, a narrow technical silo, or a management-only position. The team moves quickly, expects direct ownership, and does not trade quality for speed.