Chief Engineer (Staff Engineer)

About the role

interface.ai is the agentic AI platform for financial services — bringing conversational and agentic AI to the credit unions and community banks that serve everyday Americans. We are a profitable, category-leading AI company with a mission to make intelligent financial services accessible to millions of people.

Areas You Could Work On

• The core AI runtime and the intelligence systems — knowledge, retrieval, evaluation, and the data flywheel — that make the AI reason well and keep improving.
• The AI agents members talk to across voice and chat, and the AI-first contact center that makes employees dramatically more capable.
• The integrations and computer-use work that let agents take real action in the systems institutions run on.
• The systems that turn AI conversations into measurable outcomes, plus the operational backbone that keeps the platform fast and reliable.
• The shared data platform every team builds on, and the cross-customer fraud detection that protects millions of members.
• The platform on which interface.ai's own teams and its customers build and deploy agents.
• An AI-native consumer banking experience that acts on people's behalf.

What You'll Own

• Architecture and build — you design the systems for your domain and you write the code; you set the technical standard by example, not from a distance.
• The technical bar — you ship, you review, and you hold the line on quality and velocity across your domain's pods.
• The engineers and leads in your domain — you steer and unblock them, growing the technical capability of the team without becoming a pure manager.
• Outcomes, with your Domain PM — what the domain delivers and the impact it has, not just how it's built.
• An AI-native way of working — you build on frontier models and embed AI development tools (Claude Code, Cursor) as standard practice for everyone in your domain.

What We're Looking For

• A senior-most individual contributor (Staff level) or a hands-on technical founder who never stopped building.
• You've owned a critical domain or system end-to-end at high scale, or at a high-velocity Series A–D startup — and you can walk through the decisions you made, and the ones you considered and rejected.
• Deep technical credibility — you lead through the work, not headcount, and you've driven major technical decisions across teams without relying on direct authority.
• Still in the code — you architect, review, and build; you are not someone who stopped touching the system years ago or an “architect” who only produces diagrams.
• Extreme AI fluency — you use frontier AI tools daily and have rebuilt your workflow around them.
• First-principles problem-solving, high learning velocity (you ramp on a new domain in weeks), and a tolerance for the ambiguity and pace of a startup building process where none exists.
• Strong systems and reliability instincts, with real ownership of production systems at scale.
• BS/BA in Computer Science required; MS or PhD a strong plus.
• San Francisco-based and committed to working onsite. H1B transfers welcome.
• Bonus Points: Conversational AI, voice AI, or agentic systems built and run at production scale. Fintech, banking, or regulated financial services background. A 0→1 platform, system, or product that others went on to build on. Published writing, conference talks, or open-source work in AI systems or platform engineering.

This Role Is — And Isn't

• This is the most senior technical track in the company — not a management track. You will be measured by what you architect, build, and ship, and by the technical bar you set for the engineers around you.
• If you've been looking for the title without wanting to be in the code, this isn't it. It's also not a role for someone who needs a mature org and a detailed roadmap handed to them.
• We're a focused team building something hard in a space moving faster than most companies can track. You'll have ownership of an entire domain from day one — if that's the leverage point you've been looking for, we want to talk.

Benefits

• 100% paid health, dental & vision care
• 401(k) & financial wellness perks
• Discretionary PTO + paid parental leave
• Mental health, wellness & family benefits
• A mission-driven team shaping the future of banking

Why interface.ai

• Series A $30M raised
• Cash-flow positive — we're not burning cash hoping the product works. It works.
• Customers are live, revenue is real, and the mission is one you can explain to your family without a slide deck.
• You'll work directly with Bruce Kim (CTO / Co-Founder), who sets the technical bar and goes deep on the hardest problems, and Srinivas Njay (CEO), who is hands-on daily across product and engineering.
• Founding-team-tier equity, top-of-market base, comprehensive benefits, and a modern San Francisco office worth showing up to.
• The team is small enough that your judgment shapes everything, and the market is large enough that what you build will matter for a long time.
• interface.ai is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.

Compensation Range

$335K - $375K