Senior AI Software Engineer (Product)

Join brightwheel, a fast-growing startup focused on improving early childhood education. As a Senior AI Software Engineer, you will own AI-powered improvements in core workflows, design and build cross-cutting AI services, and shape our data and system architecture. You will also lead by example in AI-augmented engineering and focus on measurable user and business impact.

• Concevoir et construire des services d'IA transversaux qui alimentent plusieurs domaines de produits, tels que les flux de travail en classe, la facturation et la communication familiale.
• Posséder le cycle de produit de bout en bout en tant que constructeur hybride PM+Eng+Data : parler aux clients et aux équipes internes, définir les indicateurs de succès, concevoir les flux de travail et les expériences utilisateur.
• Créer des abstractions et des outils partagés pour l'IA, y compris des modèles de prompt et d'outil communs, la journalisation et la surveillance, et des composants réutilisables.
• Thoughtful about AI’s limits. You understand hallucinations, safety, and evaluation, and you design data flows, UX, and guardrails around those constraints rather than ignoring them
• Full stack with a platform mindset. You are comfortable designing data models and APIs, implementing backend logic, and building the front-end experiences users interact with — while also creating shared services and patterns that other teams can reuse
• Driven by outcomes. You care about helping preschools and childcare centers stay full, save time, and serve families better — not just about shipping “an AI feature.” You focus on measurable user and business impact
• A product-driving technical leader. You don’t wait for perfect requirements — you validate hypotheses with prototypes, talk to customers and internal teams, define success metrics, and use working software to align others and drive decisions
• AI-native. You treat AI as part of your toolchain: you rely on modern AI coding assistants and lightweight automation or orchestration tools to move dramatically faster, and you know when AI adds real leverage versus when a simpler approach is sufficient
• Security-minded. You handle sensitive school, educator, and family data with care and instinctively look for secure designs and least-privilege access patterns
• Strong computer science fundamentals (e.g., data structures, algorithms, and systems design) and a generalist mindset, comfortable moving between backend, data, and UX to get the job done
• Backend engineering skills in at least one modern web stack (such as Ruby on Rails, Python, Go, or Node), plus confidence with relational databases and larger datasets, from data modeling to performant queries and analytics
• A proven track record of shipping AI-powered products to production, with concrete examples where LLMs meaningfully improved metrics like engagement, time saved, satisfaction, or retention
• 2+ years of professional software engineering experience, with clear ownership of medium-to-large production systems from problem statement and design doc through launch and iteration
• Hands-on experience with large language models (LLMs) in real applications, including prompt and tool design, retrieval-style patterns (such as RAG), and evaluation and monitoring in production
• Experience building modern web front-ends, ideally with React or a similar component-based framework
• A portfolio of personal AI projects, open-source work, or writing that shows how you think about applied AI in real-world settings
• Formal training in computer science (4-year CS degree or equivalent depth in core CS topics)
• Background in vertical SaaS, ecommerce, or other operations-heavy domains
• Experience designing shared platforms or frameworks (for example, internal SDKs, evaluation services, or experimentation tooling) adopted by multiple teams
• A track record of raising the bar for quality and operations: writing secure, testable, maintainable code; automating and simplifying dev/test/ops workflows; writing and reviewing design docs; mentoring other engineers; and contributing to hiring through interviews and feedback