Software Engineer
Software Engineer roles at AI companies cover generalist software engineering work that does not neatly fall into frontend, backend, fullstack, ML, or other specialized tracks—often because the job is generalist by design, or because the title has not yet been segmented into a more specific role. The day-to-day is classical software engineering: designing and building software systems, writing well-tested production code, debugging across the stack, participating in the full development lifecycle, and partnering with cross-functional counterparts on what to build. AI-specific surfaces appear in many of these jobs—integrating models, building ML-adjacent infrastructure, working in AI-aware codebases—but the canonical role is software engineering as practiced across any high-growth technology company. These engineers sit across a wide range of teams depending on the company, with the title often serving as a default for engineers whose scope spans multiple areas.
Skills
What companies are looking for in this role.
Designing and implementing scalable distributed systems and infrastructure
Writing production-grade code with strong software engineering fundamentals
Building and optimizing backend services and APIs
Architecting solutions for system reliability, scalability, and performance
Debugging complex issues across full software stacks
Managing and optimizing cloud infrastructure and compute resources
Building machine learning systems and integrating ML models into production
Developing AI-native applications and agentic AI systems
Building data pipelines and managing telemetry and observability systems
Integrating and orchestrating vector search, semantic retrieval, and hybrid search techniques
Developing embedded systems and real-time software for hardware platforms
Working with robotics middleware and orchestrating complex robotics systems
Building voice processing pipelines including wake word detection, speech-to-text, and text-to-speech
Cross-functional collaboration with product, design, and research teams
Taking ownership of projects and operating with high autonomy
Communicating technical concepts clearly and concisely to diverse stakeholders
Mentoring and leading senior engineers and setting technical vision
Evaluating technology trade-offs and making data-driven architectural decisions
Incident management, root cause analysis, and postmortem processes
Rapid prototyping and experimentation with emerging technologies and tools
Technology
The tools and technologies that define this role.
Open Jobs
187 open Software Engineer jobs across 58 companies.
Other Engineering roles
Engineers focused on server-side systems, APIs, services, and data processing pipelines. Includes roles explicitly labeled as backend or server-side development.
Engineers specializing in user-facing interfaces, web applications, and client-side development. Includes UI/UX engineering and web development roles.
Engineers working across the entire application stack, handling both frontend and backend responsibilities.
Engineers building and maintaining internal platforms, cloud infrastructure, compute systems, and developer tooling.
Engineers embedded with customers or deployed on-site to solve domain-specific technical problems. Combines engineering skills with direct client interaction.