Staff Engineer, AI Native

Location: San Diego, California; also associated with Culver City, California. The position may be performed remotely and offers flexible hybrid work arrangements; compensation varies by geographic location.

Annual base salary: $200,000–$220,000 for San Diego, CA; $220,000–$240,000 for the Los Angeles, CA office location.

Company

hirify.global Engagement Platform Services builds platform services that support data-driven fan engagement across games, anime, music, film, live experiences, internal teams, and external partners.

What you will do

• Architect, design, and develop secure, scalable, high-performing RESTful API endpoints and full-stack applications.
• Collaborate with front-end engineers, product managers, designers, and engineering teams to deliver responsive, user-centric web applications.
• Define data models and database schemas and manage relational or NoSQL databases with emphasis on integrity and performance.
• Direct and govern AI coding agents across the delivery lifecycle, including context setting, output review, standards enforcement, and agent workflow design.
• Configure prompt patterns, structured output schemas, rules, and guardrails; trace and debug prompt failures, tool calls, and unexpected outputs.
• Document architecture and configuration, estimate work, participate in on-call support, and mentor junior engineers.

Requirements

• 8+ years of professional experience working with medium or large complex codebases.
• Full-stack development experience with Java, Go, or Python.
• Experience designing and implementing REST APIs.
• High proficiency in HTML, CSS, the JavaScript ecosystem, and familiarity with frameworks and tools including React, Angular, Ember, Jest, Babel, and TypeScript.
• Knowledge of UI/UX design principles.
• Demonstrated proficiency with AI-native coding tools such as Claude Code, Cursor, or GitHub Copilot as a primary delivery vehicle.
• Working knowledge of prompt engineering, context management, structured output patterns, agent development, tool use, function calling, approvals, and workflow chaining.
• Awareness of secure AI coding practices, including prompt injection, sandbox basics, and access control.
• Strong communication and interpersonal skills, collaboration skills, attention to detail, organizational skills, a strong work ethic, and the ability to work independently.
• Honesty, trustworthiness, and ethical conduct.

Nice to have

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or a related field, or at least three years of proven experience in lieu of a degree.
• Ability to write clean, maintainable, and well-documented code.
• Database management, AWS, Docker, Kubernetes, React best practices, DevOps, and CI/CD experience.
• Experience with Terraform, Ansible, Jenkins, or other automated deployment tools.
• Experience with an AI-native development framework such as the BMad Method.
• Familiarity with MCP, A2A concepts, tool-connection patterns, and agent skill configuration.
• Knowledge of evaluation basics, test-case writing, LLM-as-judge concepts, and acceptance criteria for AI-generated output.
• Experience tracing and debugging prompt chains, tool calls, and agent failures.
• Understanding of hallucination reduction, prompt caching, and model fallback strategies.
• Excellent problem-solving skills and experience with Agile methodologies such as SAFe or Scrum.

Culture & Benefits

• Inclusive employee experience focused on creativity, technology, collaboration, and continuous improvement.
• Medical, prescription drug, dental, vision, behavioral health, fertility, life insurance, and disability coverage.
• Paid parental and caregiver leave, vacation, holidays, sick leave, Summer Fridays, and a winter break.
• 401(k) plan with company match, education assistance, student loan programs, and an employee stock purchase plan.
• Flexible work arrangements, employee resource groups, referral bonuses, matching gifts, and hirify.global product discounts.