Staff Software Engineer (AI)

TL;DR

Staff Software Engineer (AI): Lead design and implementation of large-scale chatbot and conversational AI systems powering personalized customer experiences in e-commerce. With an accent on scalable distributed backend services, cloud deployment, and integration of large language models. Focus on architecting high-performance systems, driving cross-team technical initiatives, and mentoring engineers.

Location: Onsite in Bellevue, WA, United States

Salary: $166,000 - $265,500 per year

Company

hirify.global is a leading e-commerce company focused on pet products and services, committed to delivering trusted and convenient experiences for pet parents.

What you will do

• Lead design, implementation, and delivery of large-scale distributed software systems for customer insights and personalization in search.
• Develop large-scale chatbot and conversational AI services used by millions of customers.
• Collaborate with Principal Engineers to define technical vision and architecture ensuring scalability and maintainability.
• Work cross-functionally to translate business objectives into scalable engineering solutions.
• Mentor engineers across multiple levels to encourage technical growth and high-quality delivery.
• Drive initiatives to improve developer efficiency, system observability, and operational excellence.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field.
• 12+ years of professional software engineering experience with 2+ years in Staff or Principal technical leadership roles.
• Proven experience designing and delivering high-performance distributed backend services.
• Strong proficiency in Java, Kotlin, or Python.
• Experience with Terraform, Jenkins, and cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure).
• Deep understanding of LLM architectures, embeddings, and vector databases (Qdrant, Pinecone, Milvus, FAISS).
• Must be located in Bellevue, WA or able to work onsite.

Nice to have

• Experience in e-commerce or retail domains.
• Exposure to product-facing ML feature integration.
• Experience with modern search systems and vector search.
• Contributions to open-source LLM or chatbot frameworks.
• Advanced degree (MS or PhD) in Computer Science or related field.

Culture & Benefits

• Competitive salary with 401k and equity grants.
• Comprehensive insurance coverage including medical, vision, dental, life, and disability.
• Parental leave, family services, backup dependent care, and telemedicine.
• Unlimited PTO subject to manager approval and six paid holidays per year.
• Employee discounts including pet insurance and hirify.global.com products.