Staff Engineer

About the role

This is a foundational engineering role at an early-stage AI/data startup, working directly alongside founding leadership to build the core infrastructure powering a real-time people data and AI agent platform. You'll have genuine end-to-end ownership — from ambiguous problem definition through production deployment — and a direct hand in shaping long-term technical strategy.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and operate core infrastructure including APIs, LLM-powered workflows, scraping systems, and large-scale knowledge graph architecture.
• Architect and maintain production-grade systems capable of handling millions of API requests, with a focus on performance, cost efficiency, and reliability across cloud and Linux server environments.
• Own projects end-to-end, from initial scoping through deployment and iteration, shipping quickly without compromising system integrity.
• Collaborate directly with senior leadership on technical decisions, roadmap priorities, and foundational architectural choices.
• Contribute broadly across the stack, including developer documentation, internal tooling, technical tutorials, and experimental builds that showcase and stress-test platform APIs.

Requirements

• 10+ years of professional engineering experience with a strong track record of shipping to production at scale.
• Hands-on experience with Linux servers in production environments.
• Experience with agent orchestration, LLMs, or web scraping.
• Comfort working across distributed systems, cloud infrastructure (AWS or GCP), data pipelines, and microservices.
• High agency, first-principles thinking, and the ability to thrive in ambiguity.
• Background at a high-growth tech company or early-stage startup; prior founding experience is a strong plus.
• Must be authorized to work in the US — visa sponsorship is not available.

Pay

Salary range: $250,000 – $300,000 USD annually.

Location

On-site in Los Angeles, CA, United States.