[Hiring] Staff Software Engineer, AI @Basis

Role Description

As a Staff AI Engineer, you will be the technical lead for the AI Core team, specializing in the architecture and development of our agentic platform. Other ways you will contribute:

• Set the technical direction for Compass and our LLM-powered features.
• Architect multi-agent systems, own the major design decisions, and balance rapid experimentation with stable, scalable long-term architecture.
• Lead the design and evolution of the MCP servers, A2A integrations, and APIs that connect internal and external agents to the Basis media buying toolkit.
• Own agent orchestration, evaluation, and observability.
• Define how we measure agent quality and ensure agents reason, plan, and execute reliably in production.
• Own our software end to end, including production support for Compass.
• Serve as the team’s primary technical point of contact for Product, QA, Design, Operations, other Engineering teams, and relevant stakeholders.
• Represent the team in cross-team planning, architecture discussions, and RFCs.
• Drive large-scale technical projects that span multiple teams and systems, from ideation through production.
• Own team deliverables, decisions, quality, process, and technical direction.
• Develop a deep understanding of our business domain and stakeholder needs, translate business goals into realistic technical plans, and proactively identify risks and blockers.
• Own the team’s technical quality bar through design and code reviews.
• Onboard new engineers, mentor senior and mid-level engineers, and set a positive example on how to collaborate in pull requests, demos, and working relationships.
• Lead the adoption of AI-assisted and agentic development across Basis Engineering by establishing best practices and building the examples and infrastructure other teams adopt.
• Embody Basis’ core principles while fostering a positive culture within the team.
• Actively promote Basis in the community.

Qualifications

• Minimum of 8 years of professional software engineering experience, including recent experience shipping production LLM-powered applications or agent systems.
• A track record of technical leadership, including owning the technical direction of a team or major system and influencing architecture beyond your immediate area of ownership.
• Expert-level proficiency in Python, with a history of architecting production APIs and backend services and integrating with protocols such as MCP and A2A.
• Deep experience building and operating production-grade agentic systems with frameworks such as Strands, LangChain, or the Claude Agent SDK.
• Experience with evaluation and observability tools such as Langfuse or LangSmith, including designing evaluation strategies from the ground up.
• Fluency with AI coding tools (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, etc.) as a core part of the development workflow.
• Proven ability to mentor engineers and to explain complex agentic systems clearly to engineers, Product and Operations partners, and non-technical stakeholders.
• Thoughtful approach to collaboration, design, and decision-making that prioritizes equity, access, and continuous learning.

Requirements

• Bonus Points:
• Bachelor’s or advanced degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.
• Prior experience in ad tech, media planning systems, or programmatic advertising platforms.
• Hands-on experience with AWS Bedrock, including Bedrock AgentCore (Runtime, Gateway, Identity).
• Experience designing MCP tool sets or skills libraries adopted by multiple teams or external partners.
• Experience with authentication and authorization for non-human actors, such as OAuth 2.0 flows for agents and token vaulting for third-party integrations.
• Experience with RAG systems, vector databases, or knowledge retrieval approaches.

Benefits

• Competitive perks, including a flexible work week.
• 401k/RRSP matching.
• Mental health support.
• Paid sabbaticals.
• Generous parental leave.
• Flexible work options.