Staff Software Engineer

Zencoder is a company that builds and orchestrates AI agents for knowledge work tasks. They are seeking a Staff Software Engineer to drive the technical direction of their platform, ensuring high standards for system design and code quality while collaborating across teams.

Responsibilities:

• Act as a technical thought leader, setting a high bar for engineering quality
• Be hands-on, writing code for new features, prototyping, refactoring existing code to meet best practices, etc
• Lead design discussions and architecture reviews for high-impact projects
• Collaborate with product, design, and research teams to define and evolve user-facing functionality with real developer impact
• Evaluate trade-offs thoughtfully across performance, scalability, complexity, and cost and advocate for clear, maintainable solutions
• Guide and mentor other engineers, helping them grow while raising the overall technical maturity of the team
• Influence engineering culture, driving best practices in testing, observability, security, and cloud design

Requirements:

• 10+ years of experience in software engineering covering multiple large-scale, production-grade systems
• Expert in at least one of the following languages: JavaScript, Python, Rust, JVM-based (Java/Kotlin) with proficiency in at least two
• Experience building and scaling distributed systems with reliability and performance in mind. This should cover both compute and data layers and include best practices on the observability of such systems
• Strong background in cloud architecture and infrastructure design in AWS or Google Cloud environments
• Demonstrated ability to simplify complex systems and reduce unnecessary technical debt while balancing the need to move fast to compete
• Strong communication skills with a track record of aligning stakeholders, leading cross-functional efforts, and influencing without authority
• A deep shift‑left mindset throughout the entire SDLC, with early integration of security, automated testing, and CI/CD pipelines
• Deep familiarity with AI assistants, a solid grasp of the evolving AI landscape, and the ability to translate trends and capabilities into practical product improvements
• Curiosity, pragmatism, and a willingness to challenge assumptions
• Experience or a strong interest in building collaborative, real-time systems is beneficial