Staff Software Engineer - Customer Facing Applied AI

The Role

The Applied AI team works embedded with Addepar's strategic clients to figure out where AI can change how they work and then build those capabilities from scratch. You'll spend time understanding a client's world, identify what's worth building, prototype it, prove it works, and then partner with core engineering teams to ship it as product for all customers.

As a Staff Applied AI Engineer, you'll set the technical direction for the team's AI work: how we build agents, how we evaluate them, and how we take a capability from client-specific prototype to general product. You'll take the hardest client engagements yourself, defining new problem domains and making high-stakes calls on what's production-ready. You'll also build the patterns and tools that help other engineering teams across Addepar adopt AI effectively. The problems are largely unsolved. The team is new. The right person sees that as the opportunity.

What You'll Do

Set the technical direction for AI engineering across the team: agent architecture patterns, evaluation methodology, deployment and monitoring strategies

Design the AI platform layer, including the shared agent frameworks, tool integrations, and evaluation infrastructure the team builds on

Work directly with clients on the most complex engagements: identifying new problem domains, designing AI capabilities for workflows that have never been automated, and ensuring production quality

Make high-judgment calls on AI readiness: deciding what is production-worthy and what is not, balancing speed with reliability in a domain where the stakes are real

Drive the handoff from prototype to product, working with core engineering teams to generalize client-specific capabilities for all customers

Lead production quality for AI systems: designing observability, establishing SLOs, and building the operational practices that keep AI reliable

Mentor and grow AI and full stack engineers, setting the technical and cultural bar for a new team

Shape product direction by translating what you learn from client engagements into roadmap priorities

Who You Are

6+ years of professional software engineering experience

Professional experience with Python (the team's primary language)

Deep experience building and operating AI/LLM-powered systems in production: agent architectures, multi-model orchestration, evaluation at scale

Track record of designing technical systems that other engineers build on. You think in platforms and patterns, not individual features

Experience with AI-assisted development tools (Claude Code, Codex, or similar)

You've repeatedly taken products or capabilities from zero to one. You're as comfortable identifying the right problem as you are building the right system

Experience working directly with customers or external stakeholders to scope and deliver technical work

Strong judgment in ambiguous, high-stakes environments. You know when to move fast and when to be careful.

Ability to lead technical direction without formal authority. You influence across teams through the quality of your thinking and your work

Excellent communication skills. Credible with clients, engineers, and executive leadership

BS/MS in Computer Science, Mathematics, or another quantitative field, or equivalent experience

Nice to Have

Experience designing multi-service AI platform architectures (model serving, agent orchestration, evaluation infrastructure)

Experience with additional backend languages (Java is valuable in our environment)

Financial services domain knowledge (portfolios, trading, document management, regulatory workflows)

Experience with production observability and SaaS operational excellence at scale

Background in developer experience or internal platform work, building tools that change how engineering teams operate

Addepar takes a market-based approach to pay. A successful candidate's starting pay will be determined based on the role, job-related skills, experience, qualifications, work location, and market conditions. The range displayed on each job posting reflects the minimum and maximum target base salary for this role within the United States.

Compensation for this role includes base salary + bonus + equity + benefits.

Your recruiter can share more about the specific salary range for your preferred location during the hiring process. Additionally, these ranges reflect the base salary only, and do not include bonus, equity, or benefits.

Base Salary Range

$158,000—$248,000 USD