Staff Software Engineer - Applied AI and Platform

About Big Leap

Big Leap operates as a hybrid software consultancy and venture studio, collaborating with clients to develop critical software products and co-create startups alongside industry specialists. Their work spans diverse sectors including athletics, artificial intelligence, music, and SEO platforms. They prioritize rapid delivery, iterative enhancement, and pragmatic problem-solving, offering equity opportunities in select ventures and fostering a no-ego, founder-level exposure culture where engineers and innovators transform bold ideas into successful products.

Role Overview

We seek a hands-on Staff Software Engineer to lead a small engineering team focused on applied AI and platform development. This role involves both leadership and active coding, as you'll spend roughly 60-70% of your time on system design, coding, debugging, and code reviews. You will work closely with the company's founders and senior engineers.

Key Responsibilities

• Own the technical design and delivery of key projects.
• Lead and mentor two early-career engineers, enhancing their skills and independence.
• Convert dynamic requirements into detailed technical plans.
• Decompose projects into well-scoped tasks with clear ownership and deadlines.
• Review designs, pull requests, tests, and deployment strategies.
• Handle the most complex aspects of the system personally.
• Develop backend services, APIs, data pipelines, and extended workflows.
• Integrate AI models, agents, tools, data sources, and third-party systems.
• Design resilient systems featuring retries, recovery, monitoring, and clear failure modes.
• Diagnose and resolve issues across application code, databases, cloud infrastructures, permissions, and deployments.
• Enhance automated testing frameworks, AI evaluations, CI/CD pipelines, alerts, and runbooks.
• Participate in technical discussions with clients as needed.
• Proactively identify risks and keep the team aligned on critical priorities.

Required Qualifications and Experience

• At least 4 years of professional software engineering experience.
• Strong expertise in backend, platform, or distributed systems engineering.
• Proven experience leading engineering teams of at least two members while maintaining hands-on coding responsibilities.
• Proficiency in TypeScript, Node.js, Python, or similar backend programming languages.
• Experience designing and managing APIs and asynchronous systems.
• Familiarity with message queues, worker processes, PostgreSQL, object storage, and data contracts.
• Experience working with cloud providers such as AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud.
• Advanced skills in production debugging using logs, metrics, traces, and database inspection.
• Background in building or integrating production-grade AI or large language model (LLM) systems.
• Strong understanding of security practices involving credentials, access controls, and handling customer data.
• Excellent verbal and written English communication skills.
• Ability to articulate complex technical decisions to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Adaptability to shifting requirements and external dependencies.
• Consistent availability aligning with designated working hours.

Preferred Skills and Experience

• Familiarity with LangGraph or other agent orchestration tools.
• Experience with LLM tool integration and agent workflow design.
• Knowledge of retrieval systems and vector-based search methods.
• Exposure to AI evaluation frameworks.
• Frontend skills with Next.js and React.
• Experience with backend frameworks like Express.
• Knowledge of queue systems such as SQS and Pub/Sub.
• Containerization expertise with Docker and Kubernetes.
• Proficiency in CI/CD automation and release management.
• Understanding of enterprise authentication systems and single sign-on.
• Background in financial or research data systems.
• Experience automating report or document generation.
• Work with enterprise clients and legacy system modernization.

Leadership Expectations

• Provide engineers with enough context to make informed decisions rather than just assigning tasks.
• Review work efficiently without becoming a development bottleneck.
• Balance coaching with direct intervention as needed.
• Clearly define ownership and deadlines for tasks.
• Maintain visibility on technical debt.
• Ensure maintenance of testing, security, and recovery processes.
• Communicate challenges early and transparently.
• Encourage team learning from incidents and delivery setbacks.
• Improve system clarity and operational manageability.

90-Day Onboarding Plan

• Within the first 30 days: Understand the architecture, ongoing projects, team capabilities, and key technical risks.
• Within 60 days: Take ownership of delivery plans for major projects, lead the small team effectively, and contribute production code.
• Within 90 days: Eliminate at least one recurring obstacle or manual overhead, and deliver reusable improvements such as tests, alerts, evaluation frameworks, runbooks, or enhanced system interfaces.

Why Join Big Leap

• Work on challenging systems used by real-world users.
• Make meaningful technical decisions and lead without cumbersome management hierarchies.
• Remain actively involved in coding.
• Collaborate directly with experienced founders and skilled engineers.
• Contribute to the productionization of cutting-edge AI and data systems.
• See tangible results of your work promptly.

Location

Hyderabad, India

Eligibility

Applications are open to candidates without a graduation degree requirement.