Staff Software Engineer, AI

Juniper Square

Staff Software Engineer, AI at Juniper Square driving technical strategies and leading engineering teams in AI-powered solutions.

Posted 5/13/2026full-timeRemote • California • 🇺🇸 United StatesLead💰 $180,000 - $220,000 per yearWebsite

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

AWSCloudDjangoDockerJavaKubernetesMySQLNode.jsPostgresPythonSDLCTypeScript

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Champion and embed AI-native development practices and tools (e.g., Cursor, Augment) to achieve significant productivity gains, fostering a 'startup-mode' culture of rapid iteration, high velocity, and quality, including guiding the effective use of AI code generation
Take ownership over the team's architecture, actively participating in design reviews and driving the long-term technical vision.
Take ownership of team code, and actively participate in coding, testing and delivering roadmap projects. Write high-quality code that is well-tested, secure, and maintainable
Lead the team in designing and implementing document processing pipelines — including extraction, classification, chunking, embedding, and retrieval — and identify opportunities to leverage LLMs and modern AI tooling to improve accuracy, coverage, and scalability.
Own the end-to-end design and reliability of document extraction and RAG pipelines — from ingestion and preprocessing through model inference, post-processing, and structured output delivery. Define quality benchmarks, evaluation frameworks, and feedback loops to continuously improve extraction accuracy.
Effectively manage the team's short-term roadmap (spanning the next two quarters), actively identifying risks and creating clear mitigation strategies to ensure successful project delivery
Provide backend and AI/ML-focused technical leadership, leveling up existing team members and helping build high-performance teams. Mentor engineers, fostering their technical and professional growth
Collaborate with cross-functional partners (Product, UX, QA, Customer Support) to ensure the team meets project timelines and solutions align with business strategy. Handle most cross-team conflicts and decisions autonomously
Own monitoring, diagnosing, and resolving production issues within the team's services
Contribute directly to efforts through building features and frameworks, conducting code reviews, participating in architecture and system design discussions
Implement and ensure best practices across the teams to maximize developer productivity
Actively seek opportunities to improve our platform and developer experience and own those initiatives through execution
Partner with recruiting to build and grow the team
Grow into a subject matter expert (SME) in AI document extraction and RAG systems, with a deep understanding of how structured data extraction creates value across the private markets workflow.

Requirements

What you’ll need

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Mathematics, AI/ML, or a related technical field.
7+ years of backend and/or ML engineering experience, with a trajectory of increasing technical leadership, architectural responsibility, and mentorship.
Deep expertise in Python, with strong proficiency in building production-grade backend services and data pipelines; experience with other server-side languages (Node/TS, Java) a plus.
Solid understanding of Python web frameworks (like Django or FastAPI)
Hands-on experience designing and operating document processing pipelines, including parsing, extraction, classification, and structured output generation from unstructured documents (PDFs, scanned files, financial forms, etc.)
Production experience building and operating RAG systems, including chunking strategies, embedding models, vector stores (e.g., pgvector, Pinecone, Weaviate), retrieval, and reranking
Experience evaluating and improving LLM-based extraction quality — including designing eval frameworks, handling edge cases, and building human-in-the-loop feedback mechanisms
Familiarity with model serving, inference optimization, and managing LLM API costs at scale
Experience with LLM application patterns beyond basic RAG — including tool-calling agents, planning/execution loops, and multi-step reasoning systems — and how these apply to document intelligence workflows
Experience with Relational Databases like Postgres or MySQL
Experience with Cloud technologies (AWS preferred) and Container technologies (Docker and k8s)
Deep understanding of service-oriented architecture, modern software development practices, and developing scalable, reliable systems
Ability to identify and evaluate opportunities to integrate AI capabilities into products and workflows
Demonstrable product focus and a keen understanding of how technology can solve customer problems and drive business outcomes
Highly self-driven, with a proactive approach to leadership, technical problem-solving, and initiative execution
Experience working in agile development environments and familiarity with practices that promote rapid iteration and velocity
Excellent communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to articulate complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical stakeholders and align them on product goals
Proven ability to lead projects end-to-end with a player-coach mindset — hands-on in code and architecture while working autonomously with product partners
Ability to manage multiple priorities and lead teams effectively in a fast-paced environment, with the flexibility to adapt as needs shift
Demonstrated track record of mentoring engineers and elevating team technical capability
Hands-on experience with AI-native development tools (e.g., Cursor, Augment, Loveable); demonstrated ability to embed AI-driven practices to accelerate team velocity and code quality
Ability to critically evaluate AI-generated code and outputs, including identifying failure modes, regressions, and edge cases introduced by AI-assisted development
Experience building and shipping production-grade software using AI-assisted workflows across the full SDLC

Benefits

Comp & perks

Health, dental, and vision care for you and your family
Life insurance
Mental wellness coverage
Fertility and growing family support
Flex Time Off in addition to company paid holidays
Paid family leave, medical leave, and bereavement leave policies
Retirement saving plans
Allowance to customize your work and technology setup at home
Annual professional development stipend

ATS Keywords

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Applicant Tracking System Keywords

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Hard Skills & Tools

Pythonbackend servicesdata pipelinesdocument processing pipelinesRAG systemsLLM-based extraction qualityRelational DatabasesCloud technologiesContainer technologiesservice-oriented architecture

Soft Skills

leadershiptechnical problem-solvinginitiative executioncommunicationcollaborationmentoringproject managementadaptabilityself-drivenproduct focus

Certifications

Bachelor's degree in Computer ScienceBachelor's degree in MathematicsBachelor's degree in AI/ML