Staff Software Engineer: AI-Driven End-to-End Lead

SkyWater Search Partners; Minneapolis (MN); Hybrid; USD 149,000 - 201,000; Full time

Job summary

SkyWater Search Partners is partnering with a national organization to scale its Twin Cities based digital products group. This is a growth hire focused on AI-forward engineering with full ownership from idea to production, combining the stability of a large company with the speed of a startup.

Based in the Twin Cities with hybrid work, the role targets senior to principal engineers who can lead features end to end, mentor others, and navigate fast-moving, ambiguous projects using advanced AI

Qualifications

• 7+ years of software engineering experience (Senior) or 9+ (Principal) or equivalent.
• Hands-on experience building with AI coding tools inside an actual workflow.
• True full-stack experience across backend, frontend, and systems-level work.
• Experience operating at a fast, ambiguous pace.
• Strong communication skills to present tradeoffs to non-technical stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Own features end to end, from early conversations with a business stakeholder through backend, data, and user-facing interfaces
• Use agentic AI tools (Codex, Claude Code, or similar) as a core part of daily development, not a side experiment
• Architect solutions for loosely defined, ambiguous problems, accounting for edge cases up front
• Build to production standards: testing, CI/CD, observability, and recovery paths from the start
• Act as a technical lead on project-sized teams and mentor other engineers

Skills

Software engineering

AI coding tools

Full-stack

Fast-paced env

Communication skills

Education

Bachelor's degree optional

Tools

Codex

Claude Code

Job description

SkyWater Search Partners is partnering with a national organization to scale its Twin Cities based digital products group. This is a growth hire focused on AI-forward engineering with full ownership from idea to production, combining the stability of a large company with the speed of a startup.

Based in the Twin Cities with hybrid work, the role targets senior to principal engineers who can lead features end to end, mentor others, and navigate fast-moving, ambiguous projects using advanced AI