Staff Software Engineer, AI

MeridianLink

Staff Software Engineer shaping AI platform strategy for MeridianLink. Designing foundational infrastructure for customer-facing AI capabilities in credit union software products.

Posted 4/22/2026full-timeRemote • 🇺🇸 United StatesLead💰 $152,519 - $260,000 per yearWebsite

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

AWSCloudDistributed SystemsDjangoDockerGrafanaKubernetesPrometheusPythonReactTerraformTypeScript

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Own the reference architecture for the AI platform, encompassing API abstractions, prompt and version management, RAG infrastructure, vector retrieval, evaluation harnesses, and model serving.
Lead build-vs-buy evaluations for AI components, including due diligence and integration planning.
Design foundational data pipelines and infrastructure to support reliable, scalable AI services.
Define and document API contracts, standards, and platform interfaces across engineering.
Contribute to backend development in Python and RESTful API design, including integrations with leading AI providers.
Participate in full-stack delivery when needed, using React/TypeScript/Vite to deliver AI features.
Build and maintain tooling, SDKs, and platform APIs to enable safe, scalable AI adoption by product teams.
Drive improvements to AI-assisted development workflows with tools like GitHub Copilot and Claude.
Implement integrations with LLMs: context management, prompt templating, response validation, and robust fallback strategies.
Build and maintain evaluation frameworks for reproducible model testing.
Establish observability and performance tracking for AI services.
Participate in designing vector-based retrieval and model serving infrastructure as custom model capabilities become a focus.
Advise and collaborate with Security through architecture and design phases, ensuring compliance and security standards are met.
Apply secure-by-default principles (encryption, least privilege, audit logging) and stay current with financial data governance and privacy standards.
Collaborate with Product to translate business needs into technical designs and specifications, while contributing a strong architectural perspective.
Support AI platform roadmap development with product leadership.
Engage in companywide architectural forums and workgroups to drive engineering standards.
Partner with Data Engineering, DevOps/SRE, and Security to ensure aligned technical foundations.
Mentor L3–L4 engineers through code reviews, design sessions, and architectural guidance.
Promote engineering excellence, robust documentation, and reusable internal resources.

Requirements

What you’ll need

8+ years in professional software engineering, with demonstrated cross-team architectural influence
Proven end-to-end delivery of AI-powered features, from product concepts to production
Experience leading large, complex technical initiatives
Strong proficiency in Python and RESTful API development (FastAPI, Django)
Knowledge of full-stack development (React, TypeScript)
Hands-on integration with third-party LLM/AI APIs
Experience with AWS (preferred), including IAM, networking, managed services, and storage
Solid foundation in distributed systems, API design, cloud-native architecture
Comfortable with CI/CD pipelines, version control, Docker, and AI-assisted development tools
Demonstrated ability to author durable technical proposals (RFCs, ADRs)
Clear communicator with technical and non-technical stakeholders
GenAI experience (e.g., RAG pipelines, prompt management, LLM evaluation, agent frameworks)
Familiarity with vector databases/semantic search (Pinecone, pgvector, OpenSearch)
Exposure to model serving, MLOps/LLMOps practices, and model lifecycle/deployment tools
Experience building developer platforms, SDKs, and self-service engineering tooling
Experience with IaC tools (Terraform/Pulumi), Kubernetes, and observability tools (Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog)
Leadership in technical communities, mentoring, and architectural standards
Bachelor’s in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or equivalent experience

Benefits

Comp & perks

Insurance coverage (medical, dental, vision, life, and disability)
Flexible paid time off
Paid holidays
401(k) plan with company match
Remote work

ATS Keywords

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Hard Skills & Tools

PythonRESTful API developmentFastAPIDjangoReactTypeScriptAWSCI/CDDockerMLOps

Soft Skills

clear communicationmentoringarchitectural influencecollaborationleadershiptechnical proposal authoringengineering excellencecross-team collaborationproblem-solvingdocumentation

Certifications

Bachelor’s in Computer ScienceBachelor’s in Software Engineering