Role summaryThe Senior Software Engineer, Applied AI is a senior individual contributor responsible for turning prioritized AI opportunities into secure, reliable, responsible, and sustainable production capabilities. The role also contributes to advancing Engineering's effective and responsible use of AI-assisted software development practices.
Strategic responsibilities- Partner with Product Management and relevant stakeholders to evaluate and prioritize AI opportunities that address customer and organizational needs, contributing technical judgment about feasibility, risk, and whether AI is the appropriate approach.
- Lead the technical design, prototyping, implementation, deployment, and operation of secure, reliable, and scalable AI-enabled products and internal tools.
- Translate Teachstone's responsible AI principles and policies into system requirements and engineering practices, including appropriate evaluation, data protection, risk mitigation, monitoring, and human oversight.
- Establish reusable architectures, implementation patterns, tools, and documentation that enable Teachstone to develop and maintain AI-enabled systems sustainably.
- Guide choices among models, platforms, vendors, and build-versus-buy options by balancing customer and staff needs with quality, cost, risk, performance, maintainability, and governance requirements.
- Define measures of success and use production data, evaluations, and stakeholder feedback to improve the quality, effectiveness, and efficiency of AI-enabled systems over time.
- Contribute to Engineering's effective and responsible use of AI-assisted development tools by sharing practical patterns, lessons learned, and guidance with peers.
People and partnership developmentBuild AI literacy across Teachstone by mentoring others and helping cross-functional partners understand AI's capabilities, limitations, effective uses, and situations in which other approaches are better suited.
Stewardship and organizational impactGuide teams toward approved and preferred AI services, helping Teachstone adopt AI consistently, securely, responsibly, and in alignment with organizational priorities.
Qualities that support success- Adaptability, sound judgment, and a strong learning orientation in a rapidly changing AI and organizational landscape, including openness to feedback and willingness to revise assumptions.
- A practical, outcome-oriented mindset that connects technical decisions to meaningful outcomes for customers and staff.
- A curiosity-first approach that seeks context, listens to differing perspectives, and develops shared understanding before recommending or implementing solutions.
- Clear, thoughtful communication, including the ability to make complex technical concepts accessible and build alignment among people with different backgrounds and levels of AI expertise.
- Ownership and follow-through, with the judgment to surface risks, navigate ambiguity, and balance experimentation and speed with reliability and long-term sustainability.
- Other duties as assigned.
Technical qualificationsRequired:- At least 5 years of experience as a professional software engineer
- Demonstrated senior-level software engineering expertise designing, building, testing, deploying, and operating secure, reliable production systems, with sound judgment across privacy, scalability, data flow, observability, and operational cost.
- Hands-on experience taking applied-AI capabilities from experimentation into production, including model integration, prompt and context design, evaluation, monitoring, safeguards, and integration with broader software platforms.
- Experience evaluating and integrating AI models or services, with the ability to explain technical choices in terms of customer and staff value, quality, cost, risk, performance, and maintainability.
- Deep proficiency in at least one modern programming language, along with demonstrated ability to learn and work effectively across languages, codebases, and technology stacks.
- Experience building and maintaining production web applications using modern frontend and server-side frameworks and libraries.
- Experience using AI-assisted development tools effectively and responsibly in day-to-day software engineering work.
Preferred:- Experience with one or more technologies in Teachstone's current stack, including React, TanStack Start, Ruby on Rails, and Spring MVC.
- Experience working in both dynamically and statically typed programming languages.
- Experience evaluating or integrating multiple commercial or open-source AI models, platforms, or service providers.
- Experience establishing reusable engineering patterns, evaluation practices, or observability for AI-enabled systems.
- Experience sharing AI-assisted development practices or helping peers adopt new engineering tools and workflows.
What We Offer:- Fair, Competitive Pay: We ensure equal pay for equal work, using consistent salary bands based on market benchmarks, reviewed annually. Prior salaries, negotiation skills, or fear of conflict don't influence your pay.
- Salary Range: $160,000-$180,000 determined by your experience, skills and internal equity.
- Comprehensive benefits: Medical/dental, 401(k), PTO, insurance, development opportunities. Details provided at offer Eligibility depends on your role and employment status.
Ready to Make a Difference?At Teachstone, we believe that every interaction shapes a brighter future. If you're passionate about transforming education and want to be part of a team that's committed to meaningful impact, we want to hear from you. Apply today and help us create classrooms where every child thrives!
