Staff Software Engineer, Developer Experience (DevEx)

Harvey; San Francisco, Northern (CA, KY); Hybrid; USD 238,000 - 290,000; Full time

Job summary

Harvey is seeking a Software Engineer on the Developer Experience team to build scalable internal platforms and CI/CD tooling that accelerate the entire engineering org. You will own frameworks across the stack, apply AI to developer productivity, mentor peers, and partner with Backend Platform teams to ensure reliability and speed as Harvey scales.

You will influence the technical direction, ship high-impact features, and help Harvey continue to redefine how critical knowledge work is built in

Qualifications

• 7+ years of software engineering experience including scalable backend systems or internal platforms.
• Proficiency in Python and strong backend fundamentals.
• Hands-on CI/CD experience with tools like GitHub Actions and Buildkite.
• Experience with Docker, Kubernetes and infrastructure as code (Pulumi, Terraform).
• Proven leadership, mentorship, and ability to drive architectural decisions.
• Strong collaboration and communication across teams; track record of shipping reliable code.
• Experience integrating AI agents into a developer ecosystem is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Develop and scale a world-class developer platform to accelerate Harvey's hyper growth with robust CI/CD and testing frameworks.
• Build load testing and benchmarking infrastructure for AI-native applications.
• Integrate AI across the software development lifecycle and site reliability engineering.
• Collaborate with Backend Platform teams to ensure testability, reliability, and observability.
• Guide engineering teams, evangelize best practices, and maintain a paved road for speed and quality.
• Set strategic direction and roadmap for scaling developer experience during growth.
• Provide technical leadership and mentorship across the team.

Skills

Python

Backend development

Distributed systems

Leadership

Mentoring

Collaboration

AI integration

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

Pulumi

Terraform

GitHub Actions

Buildkite

CI/CD tooling

Job description

Why Harvey

At Harvey, we’re transforming how legal and professional services operate. 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. We have 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 moves fast, takes ownership, and is deeply committed to the mission — operating with intensity, staying close to our customers, and pushing each other for excellence. We live by three values: Decisiveness, Simplicity, and Job's Not Finished. We act quickly on clear judgment over perfect information, we believe simplicity is what scales, and we're never satisfied with where we are. If you want to do the best work of your career alongside people who share that drive, we'd love to build with you.

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

Role Overview

The Developer Experience team is what keeps Harvey’s fast growth momentum possible — the kind of fast where every week brings new products, new capabilities, and new challenges. We build the CI/CD systems, internal frameworks, and platform-level guardrails that enable all Harvey engineers to ship ambitious AI features rapidly and safely.

As a Software Engineer on the Developer Experience team, you will be responsible for creating frameworks and systems that maximize the velocity and efficiency of every engineer at Harvey. You’ll work across the entire tech stack and collaborate with every team to instill reliability, automation, and simplicity into our developer workflows. You'll also have a unique opportunity to apply AI directly to the problem of developer productivity, defining the future of software development within an AI-native company.

If you are passionate about building foundational platforms to enable other engineers to move fast with confidence, we’d love to hear from you.

What You’ll Do

• Develop and scale a world-class developer platform to accelerate Harvey's hyper growth. Boost velocity and stability through robust CI/CD systems, effective test frameworks, and reliable development environments..

• Build load testing and benchmarking infrastructure essential for evaluating and optimizing the performance of AI-native applications.

• Pioneer the future of software development and site reliability engineering by integrating AI agents across the software development, deployment and maintenance lifecycle.

• Collaborate with Backend Platform teams to embed testability, reliability and observability into the platform, ensuring services built on our foundation are robust, easy to test and maintain.

• Work closely with engineering teams to gather feedback, evangelize best practices, and make the “paved road” a reality — empowering every Harvey engineer to move fast with confidence.

• Set the strategic direction and roadmap for scaling developer experience as Harvey expands, and contribute strategically to team decision-making.

• Provide strong technical leadership and mentorship, upholding a high bar for engineering excellence across the team.

What You Have

• 7+ years of software engineering experience, including building scalable backend systems or internal developer platforms.

• Proficiency in Python (or similar languages) and deep knowledge of backend development fundamentals and distributed systems.

• Hands-on experience with CI/CD systems (Builtekite, Github Actions), test frameworks, or load and performance testing.

• Hands-on experience with container technologies (Docker, Kubernetes) and infrastructure as code (Pulumi, Terraform).

• A track record of producing high-quality, well-tested code, consistently following software development best practices to ensure quality and reliability.

• Proven technical leadership throughout the entire project lifecycle, including ideation, design, implementation, and productionization.

• Experience mentoring engineers, guiding architectural decisions, and shaping culture to foster engineering excellence.

• Strong problem-solving skills and a passion for improving developer experience — you enjoy creating tools or frameworks that make other engineers more productive

• Excellent collaboration and communication skills, with the ability to work across teams and incorporate feedback.

• Experience integrating AI agents into a developer ecosystem is a strong plus.

Compensation Range

$238,000 - $290,000 USD

Depending on your location, an Applicant Privacy Notice may apply to you. You can find all of our Applicant Privacy Notices here.

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]