Software Development Engineer III (AI)

TL;DR

Software Development Engineer III (AI): Designing and delivering backend services powering AI capabilities across hirify.global with an accent on RAG pipelines, vector stores, LLM integrations, and platform guardrails. Focus on integrating backend services with LLM providers and ensuring robust and observable data and inference flows.

Location: Must be based in Chicago, Illinois, United States

Salary: $136,000.00 to $190,500.00

Company

hirify.global brands power global travel for everyone, everywhere.

What you will do

• Design, build, test, and operate Python- and FastAPI-based backend services and APIs that power GenAI Platform capabilities.
• Implement sound system design, API design, and data modeling for backend services that are reliable, secure, and easy for internal customers to adopt.
• Integrate backend services with LLM providers, Elasticsearch-based vector stores, and Aurora PostgreSQL as part of hirify.global’s RAG and GenAI platform stack.
• Contribute to and enhance platform guardrails and safety features to keep GenAI applications responsible and compliant.
• Safely integrate and operate AI/ML‑enabled solutions, tools, and workflows that improve developer and traveler outcomes.
• Own well-scoped projects end-to-end, mentor junior engineers, and collaborate closely with staff/principal engineers, product managers, and applied scientists.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or a related technical field; or Equivalent related professional experience.
• 5+ years of relevant professional experience.
• Proven experience building and operating backend APIs and services in a cloud environment, preferably AWS.
• Strong proficiency in Python and experience with FastAPI or similar web frameworks, with solid understanding of software design principles, data structures, and design patterns.
• Hands-on experience with at least one data store technology (relational, NoSQL, or search), with familiarity using systems like PostgreSQL or Elasticsearch to support service-level data modeling and persistence.

Nice to have

• Experience designing and operating internal platforms, shared services, or SDKs that are consumed by multiple teams, including clear technical documentation and data-driven iteration.
• Prior exposure to or hands-on work with LLM-powered systems and GenAI concepts such as prompting, embeddings, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), vector stores, and associated evaluation or observability frameworks.
• Demonstrated ability to apply AI/ML and GenAI patterns safely within production services, including implementing and evolving guardrails, evaluations, and operational practices for AI/ML‑enabled solutions at scale.
• Experience with RAG or vector store tooling and familiarity with workflow or agent orchestration systems to integrate AI-driven capabilities into backend service architectures.
• Background working with multiple programming languages and understanding their trade-offs for different backend and data-intensive workloads, with a track record of making pragmatic, data-informed technical decisions.

Culture & Benefits

• Full benefits package, including exciting travel perks, generous time-off, parental leave, a flexible work model, and career development resources.
• Wellness & travel reimbursement, travel discounts, and an International Airlines Travel Agent ( IATAN ) membership.