Staff Software Engineer – Full- Stack AI Systems (Search, Ranking, LLMs)

The Opportunity

We’re building a next-generation intelligence platform that structures messy real-world data into something useful, searchable, and decision-ready.

This is not a “chatbot” role.

This is about designing systems that answer:

What information matters? What should be shown? And why?

You’ll work at the intersection of:

• Search & ranking systems
• LLM + retrieval (RAG) architectures
• High-scale distributed backend systems

If you’ve worked on:

• recommendation systems
• search relevance
• ML inference pipelines
• or real-time decision systems

this will feel familiar, but with far more ownership and impact.

What You’ll Own

You won’t just contribute, you’ll shape core systems:

• Architect and scale data-intensive, distributed backend systems
• Design retrieval + ranking pipelines that determine what information is surfaced
• Build and evolve LLM-powered workflows (RAG, agents, structured reasoning)
• Develop low-latency APIs and services powering real-time decision-making
• Drive system design, architecture decisions, and technical direction
• Partner cross-functionally to translate ambiguous problems into scalable systems
• Mentor engineers and raise the overall technical bar

This is a high-impact IC role, not maintenance work, not incremental.

What We’re Looking For

You will likely have:

• 7–10+ years building distributed systems or backend infrastructure
• Strong experience with production ML / AI systems (not just experimentation)
• Hands-on work with:
  • data pipelines
  • event-driven systems
  • high-throughput services
• Experience building or supporting:
  • search / ranking / recommendation systems
  • OR ML-driven decision systems

You’ll stand out if you’ve:

• Built or scaled search, recommendation, or ranking systems
• Worked on LLM + retrieval (RAG) systems in production
• Designed systems that directly impact user experience
• Demonstrated technical leadership or mentorship

Why Join the team

• Massive real-world impact
• Help route billions in capital more efficiently through better intelligence systems
• Proven momentum
• Strong product-market fit with 100%+ annual growth
• Early, high-leverage role
• Shape foundational systems, not just maintain them
• Highly competitive compensation
• $210k – $280k base + meaningful equity

Who Thrives Here

• Engineers who like hard, ambiguous problems
• People who care about what systems decide, not just how they run
• Builders who want real ownership at system level
• Those who enjoy combining ML + backend + product thinking

Interested?

If you're currently working on:

• ranking
• search
• ML systems
• or LLM infrastructure

…and want to apply that experience to a high-impact, real-world intelligence problem, I’d love to chat.

Not a Fit If…

• You’ve only worked on analytics, dashboards, or offline ML models
• Your LLM experience is limited to prompting / wrappers / demos
• You haven’t built or scaled production systems
• You prefer fully remote (this role is NYC hybrid, 3 days/week)