brightwheel - Senior AI Software Engineer, Product
Requirements
• You are a Senior Software Engineer who is both AI-native and product-minded. You love taking an ambiguous customer problem, turning it into a clear plan, and shipping a real end-to-end experience that moves a meaningful outcome. You care about craft and trust in what you ship, and you leave behind reusable building blocks so the next team can move even faster. • You will succeed in this role if you are: • 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. • 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. • 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. • 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. • 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. • Security-minded. You handle sensitive school, educator, and family data with care and instinctively look for secure designs and least-privilege access patterns.
Responsibilities
• In this role, you’ll own AI-powered improvements in core brightwheel workflows end-to-end, from opportunity sizing to launch to iteration. You’ll ship experiences that make administrators and teachers faster and more effective, while creating shared patterns and infrastructure that enable the broader engineering team to build safely and consistently. • Design and build cross-cutting AI services (such as retrieval, context, evaluation, and guardrails) that power multiple product areas like classroom workflows, billing, and family communication. • Own the end-to-end product loop as a hybrid PM+Eng+Data builder: talk to customers and internal teams, define success metrics, design workflows and user experiences, shape data and evaluation plans, and ship iterative releases from prototype to reliable, scalable production. • Create shared abstractions and tooling for AI — including common prompt and tool patterns, logging and monitoring, and reusable components — so other engineers can build on a consistent foundation. • Shape our data and system architecture so AI can safely stitch together longitudinal signals across product, billing, support, and operations, and recommend what should happen next — not just report what happened. • Lead by example in AI-augmented engineering, using AI to multiply your own speed, mentoring L2/L3 engineers, and raising the bar for how we design, ship, and operate AI-powered features. • What You’ve Done • We are open to a variety of backgrounds, but you likely bring: • 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. • 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. • 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. • 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. • Experience building modern web front-ends, ideally with React or a similar component-based framework. • Formal training in computer science (4-year CS degree or equivalent depth in core CS topics). • A portfolio of personal AI projects, open-source work, or writing that shows how you think about applied AI in real-world settings. • 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. • Backend: Ruby on Rails, Sidekiq • Data: PostgreSQL on Amazon RDS, Redis, and event and analytics pipelines • Frontend: React with TypeScript and Emotion • Mobile: Native iOS (Swift) and Android (Kotlin with Jetpack Compose) • Cloud & Infrastructure: Docker, Kubernetes on Amazon EKS, GitHub Actions and FluxCD for CI/CD, and AWS services such as S3, CloudFront, CloudWatch, and SNS • AI & Automation: AWS Bedrock and other hosted large language models, vector search, orchestration and agent frameworks, and modern AI coding tools like Cursor
Benefits
• $154K – $237K • Offers Equity • Compensation & BenefitsAt brightwheel, we reward people who make things happen. Our compensation is benchmarked against similar-stage growth companies, with ranges set by function, level, and location. Final offers reflect experience and expertise, and your recruiter can walk you through the range for your region. • Equity & OwnershipMany roles include equity, giving you the chance to share in the long-term success you help create. • Equity & Ownership • Benefits & Well-BeingWe design our benefits to help you (and your family) live well, stay healthy, and keep growing. While specifics vary by region, we typically offer: • Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage • Generous paid parental leave • Flexible PTO so you can recharge when you need it • Local retirement or savings plans (e.g., 401(k) in the U.S.) • We’re committed to pay equity and to building a diverse, inclusive workplace where everyone can do their best work and feel supported along the way. • Upload your resume here to autofill key application fields. • Drop your resume here! • Parsing your resume. Autofilling key fields... • or drag and drop here • AngelList/Wellfound • Colleague/Friend • Other/Not Listed • I am authorized to work in the United States without sponsorship, now or in the future • I am authorized to work in the United States under a current H-1B (or similar) visa and require a transfer to my next employer • I require company sponsorship for a new visa to work in the United States • Please provide your total cash compensation expectations for this role. • Decline to self-identify • Hispanic or Latino - A person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin regardless of race. • Hispanic or Latino • White (Not Hispanic or Latino) - A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa. • White • Black or African American (Not Hispanic or Latino) - A person having origins in any of the black racial groups of Africa. • Black or African American • Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander (Not Hispanic or Latino) - A person having origins in any of the peoples of Hawaii, Guam, Samoa, or other Pacific Islands. • Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander • Asian (Not Hispanic or Latino) - A person having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian Subcontinent, including, for example, Cambodia, China, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippine Islands, Thailand, and Vietnam. • Asian • American Indian or Alaska Native (Not Hispanic or Latino) - A person having origins in any of the original peoples of North and South America (including Central America), and who maintain tribal affiliation or community attachment. • American Indian or Alaska Native • Two or More Races (Not Hispanic or Latino) - All persons who identify with more than one of the above five races. • Two or More Races • Hispanic or Latino • White (Not Hispanic or Latino) • Black or African American (Not Hispanic or Latino) • Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander (Not Hispanic or Latino) • Asian (Not Hispanic or Latino) • American Indian or Alaska Native (Not Hispanic or Latino) • Two or More Races (Not Hispanic or Latino) • I identify as one or more of the classifications of protected veteran listed above • I am not a protected veteran
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