Staff Software Engineer, AI Platform

Harvey; New York (NY); On-site; USD 231,000 - 340,000; Full time

Job summary

Harvey is seeking an experienced backend engineer focused on AI/ML. The role involves design and development of platform systems foundational to AI products, integration of multi-model AI systems, and creating effective evaluation frameworks for AI quality. Ideal candidates have over 8 years in backend development, with significant AI/ML engineering experience and a strong bias towards ownership and problem-solving. Compensation ranges from $231,000 to $340,000 depending on location and experience.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience building backend systems.
• 1+ year focused on AI/ML engineering.
• Experience with multi-model AI systems in production.
• Strong judgment about abstractions and design.
• Excitement about agentic AI infrastructure challenges.

Responsibilities

• Design and build platform-level systems for AI products.
• Own model integration and evaluation infrastructure.
• Build evaluation frameworks for AI quality improvement.
• Collaborate with product engineering teams.
• Integrate latest advancements in AI and agentic systems.

Skills

Backend system building

AI/ML engineering

Technical leadership

Multi-model AI systems

Context management

Developer experience

Abstraction design

Ownership in ambiguity

Job description

Why Harvey

At Harvey, we’re transforming how legal and professional services operate — not incrementally, but end-to-end. By combining frontier agentic AI, an enterprise-grade platform, and deep domain expertise, we’re reshaping how critical knowledge work gets done for decades to come.

This is a rare chance to help build a generational company at a true inflection point. With 1000+ customers in 60+ countries, strong product-market fit, and world-class investor support, we’re scaling fast and defining a new category in real time. The work is ambitious, the bar is high, and the opportunity for growth — personal, professional, and financial — is unmatched.

Our team is sharp, motivated, and deeply committed to the mission. We move fast, operate with intensity, and take real ownership of the problems we tackle — from early thinking to long-term outcomes. We stay close to our customers — from leadership to engineers — and work together to solve real problems with urgency and care. If you thrive in ambiguity, push for excellence, and want to help shape the future of work alongside others who raise the bar, we invite you to build with us.

At Harvey, the future of professional services is being written today — and we’re just getting started.

Role Overview

Harvey’s products all depend on a shared AI foundation: the model layer and agent infrastructure that determine the quality of work our agents deliver. Legal is one of the hardest domains for AI: documents run to hundreds of pages, matters can span millions of files, and there is zero margin for error on accuracy.

The AI Platform team builds the foundation that every product and agent team at Harvey builds upon. This team is early and there’s a lot to build: model routing, agent architecture, context management, evals. Your work here sets the ceiling for what Harvey’s AI can do.

Representative Projects

• Context Engineering & Agent Infrastructure. Build the platform-level systems for context management, session state, and memory that all of Harvey’s agents and products rely on.

• Model Integration & Routing. Own the infrastructure that lets Harvey onboard new foundation models fast and route to the right one for every task - a capability every product team depends on.

• Evaluation Infrastructure. Build the shared eval tooling and frameworks that let every team across Harvey measure and improve AI quality systematically.

• Shared Abstractions. Create the SDKs, platform primitives, and developer tooling that make it dramatically easier for product teams to ship AI-powered features.

What You’ll Do

• Design and build abstractions and platform-level systems that improve all of Harvey’s agentic products.

• Own infrastructure for model integration, routing, and evaluation that helps Harvey choose and deploy the right foundation model for any given context.

• Build evaluation frameworks and tooling that let every team across Harvey iterate on AI quality effectively.

• Partner closely with product engineering teams, PMs, and design to launch cutting-edge AI products.

• Evaluate, prototype, and integrate the latest advancements in AI and agentic systems as they emerge.

What You Have

• 8+ years of experience building backend systems, with at least 1+ year focused on AI/ML engineering and a track record of technical leadership across teams.

• Experience building and shipping multi-model or multi-provider AI systems in production.

• Familiarity with context management, session state, or memory systems in AI or distributed systems. You’ve thought about what the model sees and why it matters.

• A track record of building internal platforms, SDKs, or shared infrastructure that other engineering teams actually adopted - and an understanding of why developer experience matters as much as raw capability.

• Strong judgment about abstractions. Opinionated about good design but pragmatic about shipping incrementally.

• Excitement about agentic AI and the infrastructure challenges of making autonomous systems reliable when the stakes are real.

• A bias toward full ownership: you navigate ambiguity well and don’t wait for a roadmap to start solving problems.

• Bonus: experience building evaluation frameworks, working with agent/function-calling architectures, familiarity with legal or other high-stakes professional services domains, or time at early-stage or hyper-growth startups where the underlying technology changes regularly.

Compensation Range

$231,000 - $340,000

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Harvey is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, national origin, disability, age, genetic information, veteran status, marital status, pregnancy or related condition, or any other basis protected by law.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made by emailing [e-mail]