[Hiring] Staff Software Engineer @Shipwell

Role Description

The Staff Software Engineer role is a rare chance to shape the core systems of a high-growth startup that's breaking barriers in its third record-setting year. We're looking for a senior technical leader who does their best work hands-on: someone who takes on the hardest problems, writes code that sets the standard for others, and helps whole teams get better. Shipwell is an AI-forward engineering organization. We expect our Staff Engineers to be experienced with AI-driven development and to lead in it, using agents to multiply what they and their teams can deliver. As a Staff Engineer, you'll own complex, high-impact parts of our logistics platform from design through production. You'll work closely with engineering, product, and architecture to turn technical strategy into working software, and you'll mentor engineers along the way.

What You Will Do When You Get Here

• Own the design, build, and ongoing health of critical systems and services on the Shipwell platform.
• Write high-quality, well-tested, production code, and spend most of your time building.
• Use AI agents and multi-agent workflows day to day to speed up code generation, code review, and QA testing, while keeping quality high.
• Build and share custom agents, establishing/reviewing projects AI Harness, and workflows that boost your own productivity and your team's.
• Help set how Shipwell engineers use AI, including best practices, guardrails, and ways to measure its impact on speed and quality.
• Break large, unclear problems into clear technical plans that teams can deliver step by step.
• Lead technical efforts that span several teams, keeping work aligned and unblocking delivery.
• Act as gate keeper and reviewer for project code patterns to support squad decisions and tuning, or critical shared entities.
• Work with architecture and product leadership to turn platform strategy into practical designs.
• Raise the bar for code quality, testing, observability, and operations through code reviews and by example.
• Find and fix performance bottlenecks, reliability risks, and tech debt before they become problems.
• Mentor senior and mid-level engineers, including coaching them on working well with AI tools.
• Take part in incident response and root-cause analysis, and drive lasting fixes.

Qualifications

• BS/MS/Ph.D. in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 8+ years of professional software development, including 2+ years at a senior or staff level leading technical projects.
• A track record of designing, building, and running distributed systems at scale in production.
• Deep expertise in at least one modern language (e.g., Python / Django).
• Strong knowledge of relational databases (e.g., PostgreSQL, MySQL) and NoSQL databases (e.g., MongoDB), including data modeling and query tuning.
• Hands-on experience with cloud platforms (e.g., AWS, GCP, or Azure), containers, and CI/CD pipelines.
• Experience with API design, event-driven architectures, and integrating with third-party systems.
• Familiarity with agile development and DevOps practices, including owning what you ship in production with proven experience with GH actions or similar, for CI.
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to explain technical tradeoffs to engineers and non-technical partners.

Requirements

• Proven, hands-on experience using AI coding agents (e.g., Claude Code, Cursor, OpenAI Astra, or similar) to write production code.
• Experience running multi-agent workflows, or "swarms," where several agents work in parallel on code generation, code review, and QA testing.
• A track record of building your own agents, custom tools, or automated workflows to improve your productivity, such as review bots, test generators, or task runners.
• Working knowledge of prompt and context engineering, tool/function calling, and protocols such as MCP (Model Context Protocol).
• Sound judgment about where AI fits: you know when to trust agent output, how to check it, and how to keep AI-generated code secure, correct, and maintainable.
• Portfolio or examples preferred: be ready to show agents, workflows, or projects you've built and how they changed the way you work.

Nice to Have

• Experience in logistics, supply chain, or transportation technology.
• Background with EDI, carrier integrations, or high-volume transactional systems.

Benefits

• Corporate headquarters in sunny Austin, TX.
• An exciting growth opportunity at one of Austin's fastest-growing companies.
• Comprehensive healthcare and dental insurance.
• Engaging team-building events and fun office competitions.
• Partial cell phone reimbursement.
• An elite technology package, including a new MacBook Pro.
• Competitive salary and career advancement opportunities.
• A collaborative work environment where every voice is heard and valued.