Staff Software Engineer

About the Role

We’re looking for an exceptional engineer to join the core team at Oliv AI.

This is a high-ownership role for someone who can take an ambiguous product or engineering problem, figure out what actually needs to be solved, and drive it end-to-end from architecture and prototyping to production and iteration.

You’ll primarily work on backend systems, but we don’t want engineers constrained by boundaries. If the problem requires frontend, infrastructure, data, AI/LLM integrations, or internal tooling, you should be comfortable figuring it out.

We’re looking for someone with strong engineering judgment, someone who can spot what is not working, simplify complexity, think from the customer’s perspective, and improve the systems and practices around them.

What You’ll Do

• Own complex, ambiguous engineering problems from first principles through production
• Design simple, scalable, reliable systems and make strong architectural trade-offs
• Think beyond the ticket and understand the customer problem behind what you’re building
• Identify technical or product issues proactively, not only when they are assigned
• Work across backend, frontend, infrastructure, data, and AI when needed
• Prototype quickly, test different approaches, and make decisions based on evidence
• Use modern AI tools and coding agents deeply to increase engineering leverage
• Build automation, tooling, and workflows that make yourself and the team more effective
• Help unblock difficult technical problems and raise the overall engineering bar

What We’re Looking For

• 7+ years of software engineering experience with strong ownership of production systems
• Deep backend engineering fundamentals and strong system design judgment
• Ability to operate independently in ambiguous environments
• Strong debugging and problem-solving ability
• Good product and customer judgment, you care about whether what you build actually solves the problem
• An instinct for simplicity and knowing what not to build
• A track record of identifying and improving problems beyond your immediate scope
• Comfortable learning unfamiliar technologies quickly
• Strong fluency with AI-assisted development and modern coding-agent workflows

Experience at Staff, Principal, Architect, Founding Engineer, or equivalent level is a strong signal, but demonstrated ability matters more than title.

Why Oliv AI

• We’re a small team, so strong engineers have real influence over the product, architecture, and engineering culture.
• You’ll have meaningful ownership, the freedom to challenge existing decisions, and the opportunity to shape how we build as AI changes software engineering.
• We offer competitive compensation, meaningful equity, remote flexibility, strong health benefits, and the tools you need to do your best work.

How to Apply

Share a short Loom/video covering:

• one difficult system or product you personally owned;
• one important problem you noticed and solved without being asked;
• and how the way you build software has changed over the last year.