Senior Software Engineer, AI-Native Operating System

Job Title: Senior Software Engineer, AI-Native Operating System
Salary: $180,000 - $210,000
Job Location: New York City 
Relocation Assistance: No
Visa Sponsorship: No

Job Overview
As a foundational Senior Software Engineer in New York City, you will architect the AI-native operating system that powers the future of food distribution. This is a high-agency role where you will build and ship production-grade AI agents designed to automate complex operational workflows like purchasing, inventory management, and order intake. You will move beyond prototypes to develop sophisticated multi-step reasoning systems, tool-use frameworks, and memory architectures that can reason over messy, real-world ERP data. Working in a forward-deployed model, you will partner directly with customers to turn ambiguous manual processes into scalable AI-native workflows while ensuring the reliability of these systems through rigorous evaluation and monitoring loops. This position is designed for a technical leader with a clear trajectory toward becoming Head of Engineering. You will sit at the center of the core team, reviewing code and raising the bar for engineering standards and architectural integrity across the platform. We are looking for a senior engineer with raw intellectual horsepower who has successfully shipped LLM systems in production and possesses the managerial instincts to mentor others. You should thrive in a high-velocity, intellectually competitive environment where you own projects from initial concept to live execution.

Responsibilities
You’ll be a foundational senior engineer building the AI agents that run real food-distribution businesses — working directly with the founders, raising the bar across the core team, and on track to grow into Head of Engineering. Build and ship AI agents that automate operational workflows like purchasing, inventory management, order intake, and customer support Architect multi-step agent systems with tool use, structured outputs, memory, and orchestration across complex workflows Develop context + memory systems that let agents reason over transaction history, customer behavior, and SKU-level operational data Work directly with live ERP and ops data — incomplete, inconsistent, and very real Create evaluation, monitoring, and feedback loops to continuously improve agent reliability in production Partner directly with customers in a forward-deployed model, turning ambiguous, poorly documented processes into AI-native workflows Review code and sit on top of the core teams day-to-day, raising the bar on architecture, code quality, and engineering standards Own the holistic scalability of the platform and partner with leadership on the bigger-picture architecture Help define the long-term agent architecture and platform layer that future engineers will build on Mentor other engineers and support production debugging, performance tuning, and reliability work

Qualifications
We’re looking for a senior, high-agency engineer who has shipped LLM systems in production and can grow into engineering leadership.

Core engineering experience

Raw intellectual horsepower and the ability to defend your perspective in an active ideological battlefield Strong engineering fundamentals and critical thinking Experience building with LLMs in production, not just prototypes Familiarity with agent frameworks, tool use, orchestration, or multi-step reasoning systems Comfort working with messy, unstructured, real-world data Strong product instincts — you care about usefulness and outcomes, not just model benchmarks

Leadership & ownership

Strong managerial instincts — comfortable reviewing code, mentoring engineers, and raising standards across a core team Ownership mentality with the judgment to take projects from idea to production A clear trajectory toward Head of Engineering as the team scales

Bonus points

Background in operational or workflow-heavy domains (supply chain, fintech, logistics) Startup experience and comfort with high ownership and fast iteration

Ideal Candidate

A senior, hands-on engineer based in or near New York City who has shipped real LLM/agent systems in production and wants crazy ownership at an early, well-funded company. Strong technical depth paired with managerial instincts — someone who can review code, raise the bar, and grow into Head of Engineering. Thrives in an …