Staff Software Engineer, AI Developer Tools

United States Digital Space LLC; United States; Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 245,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity (RSUs)

Competitive base pay

Benefits

Job summary

United States Digital Space LLC is seeking a Staff Engineer on the Developer Productivity - AI Developer Tools team to architect the AI platform that accelerates engineering across the company. You will redefine how our entire engineering organization builds, tests, and ships software by architecting a highly secure, context-aware, AI-native development lifecycle.

Your mission is to eliminate developer friction through AI tools, multi-agent systems, and intelligent automation, multiplying the

Qualifications

• 8+ years of systems experience delivering distributed, production-grade software.
• Proven production AI experience with prompt engineering, RAG, and multi-agent workflows.
• Developer-focused mindset to improve internal tooling and productivity.
• Strategic thinking on data privacy, security, and cost management.

Responsibilities

• Architect AI core infrastructure and APIs integrating LLMs into developer workflows.
• Lead engineering best practices for AI at the company and improve latency and costs.
• Collaborate with product, infra, and security teams to ensure scalable, secure tooling.
• Eliminate bottlenecks in the local-to-production lifecycle at scale.
• Maintain production-grade AI infrastructure with monitoring and reliability.

Skills

Systems Expertise

Production AI Experience

Developer-First Mindset

Strategic Execution

Exceptional Communication

Team Collaboration

Job description

Headquarters: Denver, CO;New York, NY;Atlanta, GA;Seattle, WA;United States - Remote

About the company

At the company, we're on a mission to grow the small business economy. We handle the hard stuff — payroll, health insurance, 401(k)s, and HR — so owners can focus on their craft and their customers. With teams in Denver, San Francisco, and New York, we support more than 500,000 small businesses nationwide and are building a workplace that reflects the people we serve.

All full-time employees receive competitive base pay, benefits, and equity (RSUs) — because everyone who helps build the company should share in its success. Offer amounts are determined by role, level, and location. Learn more about our Total Rewards philosophy .

AI is a fundamental part of how work gets done at the company. We expect all team members to actively engage with AI tools relevant to their role and grow their fluency as the technology evolves. AI experience requirements vary by role and will be assessed during the interview process.

About the Role

As a Staff Engineer on the Developer Productivity - AI Developer Tools team, you will be the architectural anchor shaping the AI platform that accelerates engineering across the company. You will redefine how our entire engineering organization builds, tests, and ships software by architecting a highly secure, context-aware, "AI-native" development lifecycle.

Your mission is to eliminate developer friction through AI tools, multi-agent systems, and intelligent automation. Whether you are building bespoke internal coding assistants, automating sprawling codebase refactors, or deploying AI to self-heal CI/CD pipelines, your work will directly multiply the velocity of hundreds of builders. Help us drive developer productivity by building the next generation of AI tools.

About the Team

The AI Developer Tools team is a specialized team within Developer Productivity. We believe AI is the next great leap in software craftsmanship. Our goal is to provide every builder at the company with a suite of "superpowers" tools that deeply understand our codebase and absorb operational toil so engineers can focus on creative problem-solving. We treat our fellow engineers as our primary customers, prioritizing developer experiences that are not just powerful, but absolutely delightful to use.

Here’s what you'll do day-to-day

• Architect AI Core Infrastructure: Design, scale, and maintain the internal platform and APIs that integrate LLMs into the developer workflow, with a heavy focus on autonomous agents, custom retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and smart context-delivery systems.
• Drive Technical Leadership & Vision: Establish engineering best practices for building with AI at the company, including robust evaluation frameworks (evals), guardrails for code safety, and strategies for optimizing model latency and token spend.
• Collaborate & Evangelize: Partner closely with product engineering teams to uncover systemic friction points, and collaborate with core Infrastructure and Security teams to ensure all AI tooling is scalable, compliant, and secure.
• Optimize Feedback Loops: Identify and eliminate critical bottlenecks in the local-to-production lifecycle at scale across the company.
• Maintain Enterprise Reliability: Treat AI infrastructure with production-grade rigor. Monitor system health, diagnose complex integration or networking issues, and mitigate model drift or downtime.

Here’s what we're looking for

• 8+ Years of Systems Expertise: You are a seasoned engineer who is highly comfortable navigating massive, complex codebases and delivering production-grade, distributed software.
• Production AI Experience: You have a proven track record of moving AI beyond prototypes. You possess a deep understanding of prompt engineering, fine-tuning, RAG architectures, and orchestrating multi-agent workflows.
• Developer-First Mindset: You are passionate about Developer Experience and Productivity. You intuitively understand what makes an internal tool frictionless, fast, and empowering for other engineers.
• Strategic Execution: You don't just build wrappers; you think deeply about data privacy, security, cost management, and systemic reliability when deploying AI solutions.
• Exceptional Communication: You can seamlessly translate bleeding-edge AI capabilities into clear, actionable infrastructure strategies, mentoring junior engineers and aligning cross-functional stakeholders along the way.
• Working as a Team: You work across team boundaries and bring other teams and groups along with you towards our strategic vision.

Our cash compensation amount for this role is targeted at $180,000/yr to $200,000/yr in Denver & most remote locations, $220,000/yr to $245,000/yr for San Francisco, New York & Seattle. Stock equity is additional. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors including candidate experience and expertise and may vary from the amounts listed above.

the company has physical office spaces in Denver, San Francisco, and New York City. Employees who are based in those locations will be expected to work from the office on designated days approximately 2-3 days per week (or more depending on role). The same office expectations apply to all Symmetry roles, the company's subsidiary, whose physical office is in Scottsdale.

Note: The San Francisco office expectations encompass both the San Francisco and San Jose metro areas.

When approved to work from a location other than a the company office, a secure, reliable, and consistent internet connection is required. This includes non-office days for hybrid employees.

Our customers come from all walks of life and so do we. We hire great people from a wide variety of backgrounds, not just because it's the right thing to do, but because it makes our company stronger. If you share our values and our enthusiasm for small businesses, you will find a home at the company.

the company is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate in hiring or any employment decision based on race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), marital status, ancestry, physical or mental disability, genetic information, veteran status, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, or other applicable legally protected characteristic. the company considers qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law. the company is also committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities and disabled veterans in our job application procedures. We want to see our candidates perform to the best of their ability. If you require a medical or religious accommodation at any time throughout your candidate journey, please fill out this form and a member of our team will get in touch with you.

the company takes security and protection of your personal information very seriously. Please review our Fraudulent Activity Disclaimer .

Personal information collected and processed as part of your the company application will be subject to the company's Applicant Privacy Notice .