Staff Software Engineer

The Opportunity

The Staff Software Engineer role at interface.ai is for someone who has already proven they can build - and is now ready to define how we build. You'll set the architectural direction for our core platform, operate as a technical authority across multiple engineering workstreams, and work in close partnership with our VP of Engineering, CTO and Co-Founder Bruce Kim, and CEO Srinivas Njay.

You won't have a manager hovering over your next decision. You'll be making the decisions - and owning the outcomes. This role has outsized influence on the company's technical trajectory, product velocity, and the careers of the engineers around you.

What You'll Work on

• Define and own the technical architecture of interface.ai's platform - multi-modal APIs, real-time event systems, AI orchestration layers, and data infrastructure
• Lead cross-functional technical initiatives: decompose ambiguous product bets into engineering roadmaps, mitigate systemic risks before they materialize, and drive resolution when they do
• Architect scalable, production-grade agentic AI and conversational AI systems - including LLM integration layers, retrieval pipelines, tool-use orchestration, and evaluation frameworks
• Establish the engineering standards that will hold as we scale from 30 to 300 engineers: service contracts, data models, deployment patterns, observability, and reliability targets
• Serve as the technical bridge between product vision and engineering reality - you translate ambition into architecture, and architecture into shipped systems
• Deeply embed AI-native development (Claude Code, Cursor) into engineering practice and help your peers build faster with it
• Mentor and elevate senior engineers - your job is to make the team around you better, faster, and more autonomous
• Operate in-person, in SF, 5 days a week - influence happens in rooms, on whiteboards, and in code reviews, not async threads

What We're Looking for

• 8+ years of software engineering, with the last several in roles where you set technical direction - not just executed it
• A clear record of architectural wins: systems you designed that scaled, survived production, and that others still rely on
• Expert-level proficiency in TypeScript and Python; strong JavaScript for full-stack contributions; comfort working across the stack when the problem demands it
• Deep platform engineering expertise: distributed system design, event-driven architectures, cloud-native infrastructure, multi-tenancy, and horizontal scale
• AI engineering depth: you understand the internals of LLM-based systems - context management, tool-use patterns, latency/cost trade-offs, evaluation strategy, and the emerging architecture of agentic AI
• The ability to design for uncertainty - you build systems that can evolve as requirements change, not systems that assume stability
• BS/BA in Computer Science required; MS or PhD in CS, AI, or a related field is a meaningful plus
• Radical ownership: problems don't sit on your desk - they get solved, delegated, or escalated within 24 hours
• Full-time SF presence - you're a force multiplier in the room

Bonus Points

• Architected production conversational AI systems, voice AI, or real-time NLP pipelines
• Deep domain experience in fintech, payments, core banking, or financial data infrastructure
• Experience as a founding or early-stage engineer at a startup that shipped at scale
• Published work, open-source contributions, or recognized technical writing in AI systems or platform engineering

What This Role Is - and Isn't

• This is not a principal-in-title-only role.
• You'll write code, review systems, and make judgment calls that affect the entire company.
• You'll partner directly with leadership - not through layers of management - and your architectural decisions will ship to production in weeks, not quarters.
• If you want to work at a place where your decisions can be felt, this is it.

Benefits

100% paid health, dental & vision care

401(k) & financial wellness perks

Daily meals on us

Commuter benefit

• Monthly wellness stipend
• Claude Enterprise + frontier AI tools for every employee - build with the best
• Brand-new 21st-floor SF office at 44 Montgomery - floor-to-ceiling views, worth showing up to
• Discretionary PTO + paid parental leave

Mental health, wellness & family benefits

A mission-driven team shaping the future of banking