Staff R&D Software Engineer (AI)

TL;DR

Staff R&D Software Engineer (AI): Building and scaling the governed context layer for AI agents with an accent on retrieval techniques, agentic workflows, and production-grade infrastructure. Focus on defining technical direction across teams, prototyping emerging AI research, and ensuring system reliability at scale.

Location: Must be based in or able to commute to Oakland, CA (Hybrid: 2 days/week in office)

Salary: $196,033 — $245,041.50 USD

Company

hirify.global is a leading data infrastructure company that automates data movement and transformation, helping organizations build a trusted foundation for analytics and AI.

What you will do

• Research and prototype emerging techniques in retrieval, reasoning, and agentic AI to inform the product roadmap.
• Build and maintain full-stack systems, from Agents Schema pipelines to the Context Catalog UI.
• Define technical direction across multiple teams to ensure architectural consistency.
• Drive AISQL capabilities, enabling natural language to SQL grounded in dbt metric definitions.
• Take ownership of production reliability, including on-call rotation, incident response, and SRE practices.
• Mentor engineers and contribute to hiring and interview processes.

Requirements

• 8+ years of programming experience with Python and/or Java.
• Proven ability to work fluidly across the full stack (backend, frontend, SRE, and QA).
• Experience with SQL and modern data warehouses like BigQuery, Snowflake, or Databricks.
• Track record of taking high-level, ambiguous direction and independently executing concrete plans.
• Strong product awareness and ability to evaluate AI/ML research for production viability.
• Demonstrated leadership in defining technical direction and mentoring other engineers.

Nice to have

• Experience with LLM-powered applications, RAG pipelines, or agent frameworks.
• Familiarity with semantic layers like dbt or LookML.
• Background in SRE, monitoring, and incident response.
• Experience with cloud environments (AWS, GCP, Kubernetes).

Culture & Benefits

• 100% employer-paid medical insurance.
• Generous PTO, sick time, parental leave, and volunteer days.
• RSU stock grants and professional development opportunities.
• Monthly cell phone stipend and mental health support platform.
• Hybrid work model with in-person collaboration in Oakland.