Staff Software Engineer AI

Mercury Insurance is a recognized company known for its achievements and culture, and they are seeking a Staff Software Engineer focused on Generative AI initiatives. This role involves providing technical leadership to implement AI solutions that solve complex business problems and mentoring engineers in AI adoption.

Responsibilities:

• Apply Generative AI techniques to solve complex business problems by identifying opportunities where AI can enhance existing software systems and create new intelligent features
• Integrate Generative AI models and capabilities into production software applications, bridging the gap between Generative AI research and practical software engineering implementation
• Evaluate and select appropriate Generative AI models, tools, and techniques for specific use cases, considering factors like performance, cost, maintainability, and business impact
• Write high-quality code that combines traditional software engineering with AI components, ensuring robust integration, proper error handling, and comprehensive test coverage
• Review and translate product requirements into technical solutions that leverage AI effectively, designing systems that seamlessly blend AI capabilities with core application functionality
• Lead design and code reviews for AI-enhanced applications, ensuring best practices in both software engineering and AI implementation while maintaining Mercury standards
• Lead multiple sprint teams to deliver AI-powered features and improvements, addressing technical challenges in integrating AI into existing software systems
• Collaborate with product managers, data scientists, and engineering teams to identify AI opportunities and translate them into practical software solutions
• Mentor engineers on how to effectively incorporate AI into their software development practices, promoting understanding of AI capabilities and limitations
• Drive practical AI adoption across teams by demonstrating how to effectively combine software engineering principles with AI technologies
• Collaborate with product managers to estimate effort for AI-enhanced features, prioritize AI integration opportunities, and deliver measurable business value through AI implementation

Requirements:

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Systems or other related fields Or equivalent combination of education and experience
• 7+ years software engineering experience with proven experience in cutting-edge Technologies and/or those used at Mercury
• 3+ years hands-on experience leading multi-team engineering initiatives for building features in a distributed application systems environment
• Proficient in programming in one or more industry-standard languages (e.g., Java, Python, Go, C++, JavaScript)
• Proficient in leveraging various data structures, algorithms, and design patterns. Experienced in relational databases, NoSQL, and caching solutions
• Skilled in APIs using modern protocols like REST and gRPC
• Experienced in message queuing, data streaming, workflow, and integration frameworks (such as Apache Kafka, Apache NiFi, Amazon SQS, MS MQ, Apache Camel, etc.). Knowledgeable in microservices architecture
• Experienced in containerization technologies like Docker and Kubernetes. Proficient in cloud platforms such as AWS, Google Cloud, or Azure
• Experienced in leveraging DevSecOps to improve engineering efficiency
• Proficient in designing and implementing high-quality distributed application systems that are modular, configurable, maximize reuse, and are fast, effective, user-friendly, secure, compliant, scalable, and maintainable
• Experienced in leveraging analytics data and experimentation to design and improve systems for speed, scalability, and effectiveness
• Excellent problem-solving skills leading to innovative solutions
• Strong communication skills. Strong ability to collaborate and influence cross-functional teams and stakeholders across multiple functional areas to address impediments and deliver desired results
• Demonstrated leadership skills through mentoring and providing technical guidance to multiple teams within a functional area
• Experienced in championing operational excellence and best practices with a focus on quality, performance, scalability, maintainability, and observability
• Experienced in driving technical strategy and vision for multiple teams
• Master's Degree in Data Science
• 5 or more years of experience with Data Science, NLP, AI, etc
• 5 or more years of experience working on production ready conversational AI related initiatives including leveraging closed and open source models and libraries including enterprise platform
• Experience with Agentic AI, RAG, Prompt, human in the loop evaluation
• Experience with product data analytics