Staff / Principal Software Engineer

About this role

Staff / Principal Software Engineer

Burlingame, CAContractIn office · 5 days a week

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About the role

Lead the architecture and delivery of secure, reliable AI software at Staff or Principal level, with hands-on ownership of systems used for critical work.

The opportunity

Set technical direction and remain hands-on from architecture through production operation. Partner with product, design, and data colleagues to build AI software for regulated industries and critical operations, with clear security boundaries, measurable quality, and meaningful human control.

Staff & Principal scope

Staff Engineers lead the architecture and delivery of substantial systems, resolve difficult technical problems, and raise engineering quality through design review and mentorship. Principal Engineers shape technical direction across systems, establish shared standards, and guide decisions with broad or long-term consequences. Level is determined by demonstrated technical leadership, scope, and impact.

What you will do

• Lead architecture decisions across AI applications, data flows, integrations, and infrastructure; document tradeoffs and guide implementation.
• Develop maintainable services, APIs, and interfaces for AI-assisted workflows, with explicit authorization and tenant boundaries.
• Integrate models, retrieval, and tool calls with validated inputs, bounded permissions, retries, and recoverable workflow state.
• Build meaningful automated tests and workflow evaluations; investigate failures using traces and operational evidence.
• Use AI coding tools effectively while reviewing generated changes for correctness, security, and fit with the codebase.
• Own performance, observability, incident investigation, and documentation for the capabilities you ship.
• Mentor engineers, lead design and code reviews, and establish practical standards for security, reliability, evaluation, and maintainability.

What you bring

• At least six years of relevant professional software engineering experience, including ownership of complex production systems.
• A bachelor’s degree or higher in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, or a closely related technical field from an accredited or officially recognized institution.
• Demonstrated Staff- or Principal-level technical leadership: architecture ownership, cross-team influence, mentoring, and delivery of significant engineering outcomes.
• Strong hands-on programming skills in a modern language such as TypeScript, Python, or Go, with a record of shipping and maintaining production software.
• Deep understanding of APIs, relational data, authentication, authorization, distributed systems, and secure handling of sensitive information.
• Hands-on experience delivering AI or ML capabilities, including model integration, evaluation, failure analysis, and production monitoring.
• Strong engineering judgment in design reviews, automated testing, continuous integration, and cloud deployment.

Helpful experience

• Permission-aware retrieval, agent tools or MCP integrations, durable workflows, and human approval flows.
• Experience supporting software in regulated settings or other environments where reliability and auditability matter.

Location & working arrangement

This position is based in our Burlingame, California office and requires working in the office five days a week.

This is a contract position. Scope, duration, and engagement terms will be discussed during the hiring process.

AI & ML knowledge

Robust knowledge of AI and machine learning fundamentals and their production application: training versus inference, embeddings, retrieval, model evaluation, data leakage, overfitting, model monitoring, and the tradeoffs among prompting, fine-tuning, and conventional software. You should be able to reason about model limitations, prompt injection, authorization boundaries, and safe tool execution, and demonstrate how you validate AI-generated code and model behavior.

Every team member should be able to discuss the capabilities and limitations of AI relevant to their work, verify AI-generated output, protect sensitive information, and keep their knowledge current as the technology evolves.

Before you apply

Direct applicants only

We work directly with individual applicants. We do not work with recruiting agencies, consulting firms, offshore or outsourcing companies, or freelancers offering external services for these openings. Please do not submit candidates or service proposals on behalf of a third party. Individuals may apply directly for our listed contract positions.

U.S. work authorization required

All applicants must be legally authorized to work in the United States without employer sponsorship. Metrosion does not provide employment visa sponsorship.

On-site in Burlingame, CA

All positions require working on-site in our Burlingame, California office five days a week. These roles are not remote or hybrid.

Different perspectives. Shared purpose.

We welcome applicants from all backgrounds and value an inclusive, respectful workplace.