Staff Software Engineer - AI Platform Team
About the role
The Role As a Staff Software Engineer on our Satori AI Platform team, you will drive the architecture of the internal platform that every Proofpoint product team uses to build agentic applications — spanning AI-assisted development, evaluation-based release gates, OpenTelemetry observability for agents in production, and cross-product AuthX for AI workloads. Your direct users are fellow product engineers, and the products they ship protect business-critical communications for Fortune 100 customers 24/7/365. The patterns and primitives you set will define how mission-critical agentic software ships across the company.
Responsibilities
- Set architectural direction for one or more platform pillars AI-assisted developer workflows, eval-driven release gates, OpenTelemetry for LLM/agent traffic, cross-product AuthX, etc.
- Design agent runtimes and SDKs on frameworks like LangGraph, OpenAI Agents SDK, Anthropic's Agent SDK, and MCP, in Python (typed) and TypeScript/Node.
- Define what "release-ready" means for an agent at Proofpoint the eval suites, safety checks, telemetry, and AuthX contracts that gate every rollout.
- Partner with product team tech leads across the org to land your architecture in their stacks; turn one-off integrations into reusable platform capabilities.
- Drive the standards for prompt management, model selection, cost/latency budgets, and observability across products.
- Design, code, review, test, and deploy software features in our application stack — Staff engineers at Proofpoint still write code.
- Mentor engineers across the platform and product teams; raise the company-wide bar for what production agentic software looks like.
Requirements
Required qualifications:
- Prior experience taking agentic or LLM-based systems to production — not just prototypes — including the eval, observability, and rollback story.
- Deep experience with Python (typed) and/or TypeScript/Node, plus an opinion on which belongs where in the Satori AI Platform.
- Hands-on work with agent frameworks (LangGraph, OpenAI/Anthropic Agents SDK, MCP, LangChain) and eval tooling (LangSmith, Braintrust, promptfoo, or similar).
- Strong fluency with OpenTelemetry, including the GenAI semantic conventions, and a track record of debugging distributed systems from traces.
- Experience designing, developing, and supporting applications in a microservices cloud environment.
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills — you can convince another team's tech lead to adopt your platform.
- A "get it done" attitude consistent with a team where everyone writes code.
Qualifications
Preferred qualifications:
- Passion, curiosity, integrity, and outstanding attention to detail while performing tasks.
Skills
Skills:
- Python (typed) and/or TypeScript/Node.
- Agent frameworks (LangGraph, OpenAI/Anthropic Agents SDK, MCP, LangChain).
- OpenTelemetry, including the GenAI semantic conventions.
Benefits
Benefits:
- Competitive compensation.
- Comprehensive benefits.
- Flexible work environment.
- Annual wellness and community outreach days.
- Always on recognition for your contributions.
- Global collaboration and networking opportunities.
Pay
Base Pay Ranges:
- SF Bay Area, New York City Metro Area: $200,300.00 - $293,810.00 USD.
- California (excludes SF Bay Area), Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Washington DC Metro, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Texas, Washington, Virginia, and Alaska: $167,300.00 - $245,355.00 USD.
- All other cities and states excluding those listed above: $152,900.00 - $224,235.00 USD.
Schedule
Proofpoint offers a competitive benefits package, including flexible time off, a comprehensive well-being program with two paid Wellbeing Days and two paid Volunteer Days per year, plus a three-week Work from Anywhere option.