Staff Software Engineer: Architect AI Platform (SF On-site)

interface.ai; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 260,000 - 310,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health benefits

Equity option

SF office in 44 Montgomery

Daily meals provided

Commuter benefits

Wellness stipend

Job summary

interface.ai is building the infrastructure layer for AI-powered financial services in San Francisco. We seek a Staff Software Engineer to set the architectural direction for our core platform, and to own outcomes across multiple engineering streams while partnering with leadership.

You’ll define scalable, production-grade AI systems and codify standards that scale from 30 to 300 engineers. You’ll mentor senior engineers, drive cross-functional initiatives, and embed AI-native development

Qualifications

• BS/BA in CS required; MS/PhD in CS/AI is a meaningful plus.
• 8+ years in software engineering with architectural direction.
• Expert-level proficiency in TypeScript and Python; strong JavaScript; full-stack capable.
• Deep platform engineering: distributed systems, event-driven architectures, cloud-native infrastructure, multi-tenancy.
• AI engineering depth: understanding LLM internals, context management, tool-use patterns, latency/cost trade-offs.
• Design for uncertainty: systems that evolve with changing requirements; ownership culture.
• Radical ownership: problems get solved, delegated, or escalated within 24 hours.
• Full-time SF presence — you are a force multiplier in the room.

Responsibilities

• Define and own the technical architecture of interface.ai's platform — multi-modal APIs, real-time event systems, AI orchestration layers, and data infrastructure
• Lead cross-functional technical initiatives: decompose ambiguous product bets into engineering roadmaps, mitigate systemic risks before they materialize, and drive resolution when they do
• Architect scalable, production-grade agentic AI and conversational AI systems — including LLM integration layers, retrieval pipelines, tool-use orchestration, and evaluation frameworks
• Establish the engineering standards that will hold as we scale from 30 to 300 engineers: service contracts, data models, deployment patterns, observability, and reliability targets
• Serve as the technical bridge between product vision and engineering reality — you translate ambition into architecture, and architecture into shipped systems
• Deeply embed AI-native development (Claude Code, Cursor) into engineering practice and help your peers build faster with it
• Mentor and elevate senior engineers — your job is to make the team around you better, faster, and more autonomous
• Operate in-person, in SF, 5 days a week — influence happens in rooms, on whiteboards, and in code reviews, not async threads

Skills

TypeScript

Python

JavaScript

Distributed Systems

Cloud-native Infra

LLM-based systems

Architectural leadership

Mentoring

In-person SF presence

Claude Code

Cursor

Education

BS/BA in Computer Science

MS/PhD in CS/AI

Job description

interface.ai is building the infrastructure layer for AI-powered financial services in San Francisco. We seek a Staff Software Engineer to set the architectural direction for our core platform, and to own outcomes across multiple engineering streams while partnering with leadership.

You’ll define scalable, production-grade AI systems and codify standards that scale from 30 to 300 engineers. You’ll mentor senior engineers, drive cross-functional initiatives, and embed AI-native development