Staff AI Engineer

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Oakland / $35000 - $275000 annum

INFO

Salary

SALARY:

$35000 - $275000

Location

LOCATION

Oakland

Job Type
JOB TYPE

Permanent

Staff Engineer, Agentic AI Platforms

Hybrid - Oakland, CA (3 days onsite weekly - non-negotiable)
Competitive Compensation: Up to $325K Base + Bonus + Equity

A profitable and rapidly growing technology company operating within a highly impactful industry is seeking a senior-level Founding Engineer to help architect and build next-generation Agentic AI platforms from the ground up. This is a rare opportunity to work directly alongside a newly appointed CTO and play a foundational role in shaping the company's AI strategy, products, and engineering culture.

This is not a traditional "manage and delegate" role. We are looking for builders - engineers who thrive in hands-on environments and enjoy designing systems, writing production code, validating ideas with customers, and scaling intelligent workflows end-to-end.

What You'll Be Doing

  • Architect and build agentic GenAI workflows leveraging proprietary and domain-specific data-sets

  • Design intelligent orchestration systems and AI-driven workflow automation platforms

  • Develop commercial AI applications focused on user behavior, personalization, engagement, and predictive insights

  • Build and optimize scalable backend systems using Python, Django, PostgreSQL, and AWS

  • Collaborate closely with product, leadership, and a distributed engineering team

  • Partner directly with the CTO on technical strategy, innovation, and product direction

  • Help evolve greenfield concepts into production-ready platforms

What We're Looking For

  • Strong back-end engineering expertise with Python and Django

  • Front-end experience with React

  • Deep understanding of AWS cloud infrastructure and modern distributed systems

  • Experience building AI-powered applications, LLM integrations, or workflow orchestration systems

  • Familiarity with OpenAI technologies and agentic AI frameworks is highly preferred

  • Experience designing scalable knowledge systems and data-intensive applications

  • Ability to operate independently in lean, high-performance engineering environments

  • Healthcare or medical data experience is highly preferred

Why This Opportunity Stands Out

  • Direct partnership with a newly hired CTO on foundational architecture decisions

  • Founding engineer-level impact with the ability to shape products from inception

  • Profitable company with strong business fundamentals - focused on execution, not hype

  • Small, elite engineering team solving meaningful and technically challenging problems

  • Opportunity to work on cutting-edge AI systems in a highly specialized domain

  • Significant long-term upside through bonus and equity participation

Additional Details

  • Hybrid schedule: onsite in Oakland, CA three days per week (Monday / Wednesday / Friday)

  • Collaborative overlap with international engineering teams during morning PT hours

  • Compensation package includes highly competitive base salary, bonus structure, and meaningful equity

If you're excited about building intelligent systems from scratch, operating in a high-ownership environment, and helping define the future of applied AI, we'd love to connect.

CONTACT

Stephanie Landa

Principal Recruitment Consultant

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