← All roles

Principal Software Engineer

STLabs· Engineering
Apply on company site
NYC, NY$200k - $250kFull-timePosted 3w ago

About the role

Senior technical leader responsible for end-to-end AI-native software across data ingestion, model reasoning, APIs, and user interfaces; architects and ships production AI systems, mentors engineers, and defines the applied full-stack AI approach at Standard Template Labs.

Responsibilities

  • Architect the core intelligence layer of the platform, spanning data ingestion, embeddings, retrieval, graph reasoning, agents, and real-time inference.
  • Define how LLMs and predictive models integrate across backend services, APIs, and user-facing experiences.
  • Identify high-impact opportunities where generative, predictive, or autonomous AI can eliminate operational toil, improve system understanding, or enhance decision-making.
  • Lead architectural decisions around model selection, evaluation, fine-tuning, and inference infrastructure (custom vs OSS vs managed APIs).
  • Establish best practices for AI-first engineering, including prompt and schema design, context assembly, evaluators, guardrails, observability, and continuous model monitoring.
  • Partner with product and leadership to align AI capabilities with customer outcomes, trust requirements, and long-term platform strategy.
  • Build end-to-end AI-powered features - from backend reasoning services to APIs and user-facing workflows.
  • Design and implement production-grade LLM and agent workflows, including automated enrichment, anomaly explanation, topology discovery, change impact analysis, and natural language querying.
  • Develop scalable backend systems for high-throughput inference, embedding generation, vector search, and graph traversal.
  • Collaborate on or directly contribute to frontend experiences that make AI outputs understandable, actionable, and debuggable for users (e.g., explanations, confidence signals, provenance, and feedback loops).
  • Implement retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines and hybrid search systems that combine structured data, graphs, and unstructured context.
  • Write clean, well-structured, production-quality code—and champion AI-assisted development tools to improve velocity and correctness.
  • Continuously evaluate emerging AI frameworks, agent runtimes, orchestration tools, and model APIs, integrating them where they drive real user value.
  • Design data models and pipelines that support learning, reasoning, and traceability across the platform.
  • Build and evolve distributed systems that are observable, fault-tolerant, and cost-efficient under AI workloads.
  • Partner with infrastructure and DevOps teams to shape deployment, scaling, monitoring, and rollback strategies for AI-driven services.
  • Ensure AI systems meet enterprise requirements for reliability, security, explainability, and compliance.
  • Mentor engineers on full-stack AI patterns, system design for AI workloads, and practical approaches to shipping intelligent features.
  • Lead architecture reviews and technical deep-dives focused on reliability, safety, performance, and user trust.
  • Influence engineering standards and culture, emphasizing craftsmanship, clarity, and ownership across the stack.
  • Help attract and develop top-tier engineering talent excited about AI-native, product-driven systems.

Qualifications

  • 10+ years of professional software engineering experience, including technical leadership in complex, high-scale systems.
  • Proven experience architecting and shipping distributed systems with meaningful AI, automation, or intelligent decisioning components.
  • Hands-on experience with LLMs, embeddings, vector databases, RAG pipelines, agent frameworks, or model integration patterns.
  • Strong system design skills across APIs, data modeling, event-driven architectures, caching, storage, and performance optimization.
  • Comfort working across the stack, including backend services and collaboration on user-facing or API-layer design.
  • Proficiency in at least one modern programming language (Go, Rust, Python, Java, or C++).
  • Experience mentoring senior engineers and driving engineering best practices.
  • Familiarity with AI-assisted development workflows and modern DevOps/tooling.

Skills

Required:Data ingestionEmbeddingsVector databasesLLMs & agent workflowsSystem design

Benefits

  • Competitive compensation, equity, and a comprehensive benefits package.
  • A culture that values craftsmanship, autonomy, and technical excellence.
Last updated Oct 2, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.
STLabs logo

About STLabs

STLabs | AI-Native IT Service Management Platform

AI-native IT service management. AI agents resolve tickets instantly, powered by Axiom: a live graph of your people, devices, apps, and access.

ITPeopleAxiomTicketingWorkflowsSecurityPlatformData
Company profileWebsite

More open roles at STLabs