Staff Software Engineer (AI-Native Platform)

First American; Santa Ana (CA); On-site; USD 149,000 - 198,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, vision benefits

401k + PTO

Employee stock purchase plan

Job summary

First American in Santa Ana, CA is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to provide technical leadership across multiple teams, driving architecture, standards, and reusable platforms for AI-native software in real estate technology.

You will partner with product, security, and AI practitioners to solve high-impact challenges, modernize platforms, and raise engineering velocity while ensuring reliability and governance across distributed systems.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience designing and building production software systems.
• Demonstrated experience driving architecture across multiple teams, services, or business domains.
• Deep experience building cloud-native distributed systems using modern software engineering practices.
• Experience designing and operating production AI systems, including LLM-powered applications and agentic workflows.
• Strong experience creating reusable engineering platforms, frameworks, libraries, or shared infrastructure adopted across multiple teams.
• Expertise designing APIs, event-driven architectures, and highly available distributed systems.
• Experience establishing engineering standards, architectural patterns, and operational best practices across organizations.
• Demonstrated experience leading technical direction through influence rather than direct management.
• Deep understanding of AI operational concerns including evaluation strategies, model selection, latency optimization, cost management, observability, governance, and safety.
• Experience designing AI development workflows that improve engineering productivity through responsible use of AI-assisted development tools such as Cursor, Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, or similar.

Responsibilities

• Drive Cross-Organization Technical Strategy
• Define architectural direction, align engineering organizations around common approaches, and guide long-term technical investments that improve organizational scalability, reliability, and developer productivity.
• Navigate ambiguity, resolve competing priorities, and build consensus across engineering, product, and business stakeholders.
• Build with AI Design and evolve the AI development practices and help drive the creation of AI powered products for our AI is not just transforming how we build, it changes what we build.
• Architect Complex Distributed Systems Define architecture for large-scale, distributed systems spanning multiple services, domains, and business capabilities.
• Drive architectural consistency around: APIs event-driven systems cloud infrastructure reliability security observability operational excellence.
• Simplify complex systems through thoughtful abstractions and reusable patterns.
• Raise the Engineering Bar Establish engineering standards that improve software quality across the organization.
• Lead architectural reviews, influence design decisions, and help engineering teams make pragmatic tradeoffs between speed, simplicity, scalability, reliability, and cost.
• Champion modern engineering practices including AI-assisted software development, automated testing, observability, continuous delivery, and platform engineering.
• Mentor Technical Leaders Multiply the effectiveness of senior engineers and technical leads through coaching, architectural guidance, and design mentorship.
• Help engineers grow their system thinking, technical judgment, and decision-making while creating an engineering culture centered on curiosity, ownership, and continuous improvement.
• Drive Operational Excellence Lead initiatives that improve organizational reliability, resiliency, security, and operational maturity.
• Define engineering patterns for: observability production diagnostics AI evaluation latency budgets cost optimization incident response resiliency governance.
• Establish measurable engineering standards that improve the health of production systems over time.
• Collaborate Across the Organization Partner closely with engineering leadership, product management, solution architecture, security, platform engineering, infrastructure, and AI practitioners to translate business strategy into scalable technical solutions.
• Influence decisions through technical expertise, data, and strong communication rather than organizational authority.

Skills

Software architecture

Cloud-native distributed systems

AI production systems

Mentoring

Communication

System thinking

Tools

Kubernetes

Docker

Terraform

CDK

OpenTelemetry

Prometheus

Grafana

Datadog

Azure OpenAI

Job description

Who We Are

Join a team that puts its People First! Since 1889, First American (NYSE: FAF) has held an unwavering belief in its people. They are passionate about what they do, and we are equally passionate about fostering an environment where all feel welcome, supported, and empowered to be innovative and reach their full potential. Our inclusive, people-first culture has earned our company numerous accolades, including being named to the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For® list for eleven consecutive years. We have also earned awards as a best place to work for women, diversity and LGBTQ+ employees, and have been included on more than 50 regional best places to work lists. First American will always strive to be a great place to work, for all. For more information, please visit www.careers.firstam.com.

What We Do

Remote Work Welcome Be part of a transformative engineering organization shaping how First American builds and delivers world-class AI-native technology products that power the real estate industry. We are looking for exceptional engineers who thrive in ambiguity, influence without authority, and create technical leverage across teams. As a Staff Software Engineer, you will provide technical leadership across multiple engineering teams, driving architecture, engineering standards, and reusable platforms that enable teams to build intelligent software faster, safer, and more consistently. You will partner with engineering leaders, product management, architects, and AI practitioners to solve complex technical challenges that span products and organizations. You will play a critical role in modernizing our platform through cloud-native architecture, shared engineering platforms, and production AI systems that improve both customer outcomes and engineering velocity.

What You'll Do

• Drive Cross-Organization Technical Strategy Lead technical initiatives that span multiple teams, products, and domains.
• Define architectural direction, align engineering organizations around common approaches, and guide long-term technical investments that improve organizational scalability, reliability, and developer productivity.
• Navigate ambiguity, resolve competing priorities, and build consensus across engineering, product, and business stakeholders.
• Build with AI Design and evolve the AI development practices and help drive the creation of AI powered products for our AI is not just transforming how we build, it changes what we build. We are looking for a Staff Engineer who can help mentor teams on both.
• Architect Complex Distributed Systems Define architecture for large-scale, distributed systems spanning multiple services, domains, and business capabilities.
• Drive architectural consistency around: APIs event-driven systems cloud infrastructure reliability security observability operational excellence.
• Simplify complex systems through thoughtful abstractions and reusable patterns.
• Raise the Engineering Bar Establish engineering standards that improve software quality across the organization.
• Lead architectural reviews, influence design decisions, and help engineering teams make pragmatic tradeoffs between speed, simplicity, scalability, reliability, and cost.
• Champion modern engineering practices including AI-assisted software development, automated testing, observability, continuous delivery, and platform engineering.
• Mentor Technical Leaders Multiply the effectiveness of senior engineers and technical leads through coaching, architectural guidance, and design mentorship.
• Help engineers grow their system thinking, technical judgment, and decision-making while creating an engineering culture centered on curiosity, ownership, and continuous improvement.
• Drive Operational Excellence Lead initiatives that improve organizational reliability, resiliency, security, and operational maturity.
• Define engineering patterns for: observability production diagnostics AI evaluation latency budgets cost optimization incident response resiliency governance.
• Establish measurable engineering standards that improve the health of production systems over time.
• Collaborate Across the Organization Partner closely with engineering leadership, product management, solution architecture, security, platform engineering, infrastructure, and AI practitioners to translate business strategy into scalable technical solutions.
• Influence decisions through technical expertise, data, and strong communication rather than organizational authority.

What You'll Bring

• 8+ years of experience designing and building production software systems, including significant experience leading large-scale technical initiatives.
• Demonstrated experience driving architecture across multiple teams, services, or business domains.
• Deep experience building cloud-native distributed systems using modern software engineering practices.
• Experience designing and operating production AI systems, including LLM-powered applications and agentic workflows.
• Strong experience creating reusable engineering platforms, frameworks, libraries, or shared infrastructure adopted across multiple teams.
• Expertise designing APIs, event-driven architectures, and highly available distributed systems.
• Experience establishing engineering standards, architectural patterns, and operational best practices across organizations.
• Demonstrated experience leading technical direction through influence rather than direct management.
• Deep understanding of AI operational concerns including evaluation strategies, model selection, latency optimization, cost management, observability, governance, and safety.
• Experience designing AI development workflows that improve engineering productivity through responsible use of AI-assisted development tools such as Cursor, Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, or similar.
• Strong understanding of software architecture, cloud infrastructure, reliability engineering, and platform design.
• Excellent communication skills with the ability to explain complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Proven ability to mentor senior engineers and elevate engineering organizations through coaching and technical leadership.
• Strong systems thinking with an outcome-oriented mindset focused on creating durable organizational leverage.
• Ideally, You'll Also Have Experience With Enterprise AI platforms (OpenAI, Azure OpenAI, Anthropic, Databricks) C# (.NET), Python, TypeScript, Go, Java, or similar languages Kubernetes, Docker, and modern platform engineering practices Infrastructure as Code using Terraform, CDK, or similar tooling Observability platforms including OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, or similar Large-scale platform modernization or cloud migration initiatives Highly regulated industries such as Financial Services, Insurance, Healthcare, or similar.

Pay Range: $148,600.00 - $198,200.00 Annually

Pay is based on a number of factors which may include job-related knowledge, skills, experience, business requirements and geographic location.

Note that the following statements only apply to candidates who will be working from an unincorporated area within Los Angeles County.

First American will consider for employment all qualified applicants, including those with arrest or conviction records, in a manner consistent with the requirements of applicable state and local laws (e.g., the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers and the California Fair Chance Act).

First American intends to conduct a review of an applicant's criminal history in connection with a conditional offer.

First American reasonably believes that a criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship with the following material job duties for this position potentially resulting in the withdrawal of the conditional offer of employment: handling of confidential, proprietary or trade secret information belonging to First American or its customers, administrating or facilitating financial transactions, and the ability to meet customer-imposed criminal history requirements.

What We Offer

• Based on eligibility, First American offers a comprehensive benefits package including medical, dental, vision, 401k, PTO/paid sick leave and other great benefits like an employee stock purchase plan.

First American is an equal opportunity employer in every sense of the term.

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