Staff Software Engineer

Interface AI

$263K — $310K *
Information Technology
8 - 10 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 8+ years of software engineering experience, with recent roles involving technical direction setting
  • Proven architectural successes in scalable systems used in production
  • Expert proficiency in TypeScript and Python, with strong JavaScript skills
  • Deep expertise in platform engineering concepts including distributed systems and event-driven architectures
  • Strong understanding of AI engineering, particularly with LLMs and agentic AI systems
  • Ability to design adaptable systems that evolve with changing requirements
  • BS/BA in Computer Science required; MS or PhD in related fields is advantageous
  • Demonstrated radical ownership and proactive problem-solving mindset

Responsibilities

  • Define and own the technical architecture of the platform, including APIs and data infrastructure
  • Lead cross-functional initiatives and convert product concepts into engineering roadmaps
  • Architect scalable AI and conversational systems, encompassing LLM integrations and evaluation frameworks
  • Establish engineering standards to guide growth from 30 to 300 engineers
  • Act as a conduit between product vision and engineering execution
  • Embed AI-native development practices in everyday engineering activities
  • Mentor senior engineers to enhance team skill and autonomy
  • Operate in-person in SF five days a week for collaborative influence

Benefits

  • Collaborative work environment with direct influence on product and technical direction
  • Opportunity to work closely with company leadership
  • Immediate impact on company outcomes through personal contributions
  • Focus on rapid delivery of architectural decisions into production
  • Potential for career development opportunities through mentorship and team advancement
Full Job Description
Banking is being reimagined-and customers expect every interaction to be easy, personal, and instant.

We are building a universal banking assistant that millions of U.S. consumers can use to transact across all financial institutions and, over time, autonomously drive their financial goals. Powered by our proprietary BankGPT platform, this assistant is positioned to displace age-old legacy systems within financial institutions and own the end-to-end CX stack, unlocking a $200B opportunity and potentially replacing multiple publicly traded companies.

Ultimately, our mission is to drive financial well-being for millions of consumers.

With over two-thirds of Americans living paycheck to paycheck, 50% holding less than $500 in savings, and only 17% financially literate, we aim toput financial well-being on autopilot to help solve this problem.

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.

Compensation: Base $263,245 - $310,043 + Bonus + Equity + Benefits

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