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Chief Engineer (Principal Engineer)

High-growth Fintech and AI organization San Francisco, CA Direct Hire Finance & Accounting $335,000 - $375,000

Job Summary

We are seeking a high-impact technical leader to serve as a Chief Engineer, overseeing core domain architecture and production systems for a major financial services initiative. This is a senior-most individual contributor role designed for a technical visionary who can navigate high-ambiguity environments and build scalable, AI-native systems from the ground up.

Essential Functions

  • Own a core domain end-to-end, including architecture, technical standards, and business outcomes
  • Architect and build production systems while actively writing code and setting technical standards
  • Participate in weekly leadership councils alongside the executive team
  • Partner with Product Managers to drive measurable business goals
  • Mentor and unblock engineers across the domain to grow team capabilities
  • Manage quality and velocity across multiple development pods
  • Standardize AI-native development workflows using frontier tools
  • Develop systems for core AI runtimes, agentic systems, and data platforms

Required Qualifications

  • 8 to 15 years of experience in software engineering, including Principal or Distinguished levels
  • Proven track record of building core systems in production at scale
  • Experience taking products from 0 to 1 in a startup environment
  • Deep expertise in system design and architecture review
  • Demonstrated ability to build systems independently without heavy reliance on third-party tools
  • Expertise in AI systems and high-level technical fluency
  • Ability to work on-site 5 days a week in San Francisco

Preferred Qualifications

  • Previous experience as a technical founder or founding engineer
  • Experience in fintech, banking, or other regulated financial services
  • Background in conversational AI, voice AI, or agentic systems
  • History of published writing, conference talks, or open-source contributions in AI

Technical Skills

  • Agentic AI
  • Conversational AI
  • Voice AI
  • Large Language Models (LLMs)
  • AI Runtimes
  • Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)
  • AI Evaluation Systems
  • Data Platforms
  • Claude Code
  • Cursor

Education & Certifications

Bachelor of Science in Computer Science or a related STEM field.

Compensation & Benefits

Salary range: $335,000 - $375,000 per year.

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