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About This Role
Location
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United States
Employment Type
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Full time
Location Type
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Remote
Department
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Research \& Development
Compensation
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- Tier 1$217K – $294K • Offers Equity • Offers Bonus
- Tier 2$201K – $272K • Offers Equity • Offers Bonus
- Tier 3$193K – $261K • Offers Equity • Offers Bonus
Coder determines compensation based on the level, role, and location you live in. For more information, please see our Compensation Philosophy.
This role is leveled as P5\. Please feel free to ask any questions about compensation and levels during your initial interview.
We’re looking for a Staff Software Engineer to help shape AI governance for developer tooling at Coder. This role sits on our AI Governance team, which builds and maintains two enterprise\-grade components of Coder's AI governance stack.
AI Gateway is a centralized LLM gateway that sits between coding agents and providers such as OpenAI or Anthropic, providing organizations with audit trails, token tracking, cost control, and centralized authentication. Agent Firewall wraps those agents with default\-deny network policies, controlling which domains and methods they can reach inside workspaces.
This team works across the full stack \- from Go backend and React frontend to integrating with LLM provider APIs. Day to day, you'll be shipping features, hardening security boundaries, collaborating with enterprise customers on real\-world policy needs, and contributing to Coder's open\-source ecosystem.
What you'll do here
- Design and build product features that push the standard for remote development in self\-hosted environments
- Create and improve upon popular open source projects that integrate with VS Code, JetBrains, and other developer tools
- Champion best practices to both internal team members and external contributors
- Collaborate with Product and Design teams at Coder, as well as with partners like JetBrains, to execute key product integrations
- Document the design, implementation, and operations of systems for knowledge sharing within the team
- Work alongside Customer Success teams to support Coder’s enterprise user base
- Work with cutting\-edge AI technologies to create seamless, painless developer experiences
- Rapidly iterate from prototype to implementation in a highly adaptive, reactive team environment
What we're looking for
- 8\+ years of full\-stack experience writing code in a professional setting, with 1\+ year(s) writing Go (ideally in current or most recent position)
- Proficiency in building distributed systems in Go
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills
- Exceptional debugging and troubleshooting skills, and the tenacity to drive a solution to a conclusion
- You are self\-motivated with a creative and analytical mindset
Our tech stack
- Frontend: Typescript, React, Vite
- Backend: Go, Postgres, GCP, Kubernetes, gRPC
- Observability: Prometheus, Grafana
- CI/CD: GitHub Actions
- General: GitHub, Slack, Discord, Notion
Bonus tacos if you have
- (Tacos? If you need an ice\-breaker, ask how we say thanks by giving tacos!)
- Experience with TypeScript and React
- You have a background in developer tooling, platform engineering, or IaC
- You have a curiosity about the latest tech trends and what is going on in the world of developer tools
About Coder
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Coder is an AI software development company leading the future of autonomous coding. We empower teams to build software faster, more securely, and at scale through the collaboration of AI coding agents and human developers. Our mission is to make agentic AI a safe, trusted, and integral part of every software development lifecycle.
Our self\-hosted AI Development Environment is the foundation for deploying agentic AI in the enterprise. It provides a secure, standardized, and governed workspace to deploy autonomous coding agents alongside human developers, accelerating innovation while maintaining control and compliance. Coder's isolated, policy\-driven environments improve productivity, cut cloud costs, and reduce data risks. Developers transition to AI at their own pace using their own tools. Platform and security teams can govern, audit, and manage a great developer experience at scale.
Interview process
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We believe that the interview process should be transparent, consistent, and enjoyable. We value your time and hope to complete the interview process in two to four weeks, if schedules allow. Through your interviews, you will meet a mix of individual contributors, managers, and senior leaders.
AI use during the interview process
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As an AI company, Coder embraces the use of AI tools, and we want to be transparent about our expectations as you navigate our interview process.
Not permitted: Using AI assistance during conversational interviews.
Permitted: Using AI tooling for take\-home assessments. Please flag where and to what extent it was used in your take\-home. Your submission will not be penalized for using AI as long as it is done honestly.
Our use of AI in hiring
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We use AI tools to help manage our recruitment process efficiently and fairly. Specifically:
- Ashby helps us review inbound applications by surfacing candidates who best match the role requirements we've defined. This tool does not make hiring decisions \- it helps our team prioritize which applications to review first.
- Granola takes notes during our interview calls so our team can focus on the conversation with you.
All hiring decisions are made by humans. Our team reviews applications, conducts interviews, and makes final selections. AI tools assist us but never replace human judgment, and these practices are conducted in compliance with applicable data protection, AI governance, and labor laws. Your data is not used to train AI models.
In accordance with New York City Local Law 144, an independent bias audit has been conducted on "Automated Employment Decision Tools"; results are available for Ashby.
If you're applying for a role at Coder and have questions about how we use AI in our process, or if you'd like to request information about the data we collect, please contact careers@coder.com.
Coder is a proud Equal Opportunity Employer
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We are committed to providing equal employment opportunities to qualified applicants and do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, pregnancy, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, national origin, age, marital status, genetic information, disability, protected veteran status or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local laws.
Salary Context
This $217K-$294K range is above the 75th percentile for AI Software Engineer roles in our dataset (median: $183K across 194 roles with salary data).
Role Details
About This Role
AI Software Engineers build the applications and systems that AI models run inside. They own the API layers, data pipelines, frontend integrations, and infrastructure that turn a model into a product users interact with. Every AI company needs engineers who can build the software around the AI.
The challenge is building reliable systems around inherently unreliable components. Models are probabilistic. They'll give different answers to the same question. They hallucinate. They're slow. They're expensive. Your job is to build an application layer that handles all of this gracefully while delivering a product that users trust and enjoy.
Across the 3,708 AI roles we're tracking, AI Software Engineer positions make up 7% of the market. At Coder, this role fits into their broader AI and engineering organization.
AI Software Engineer roles are among the most numerous in the AI job market. Every company deploying AI needs software engineers who understand AI integration patterns. The demand is broad, spanning startups to enterprises, across every industry adopting AI capabilities.
What the Work Looks Like
A typical week includes: building API endpoints that serve model inference with caching and fallback logic, designing the data pipeline that feeds context to a RAG system, implementing streaming responses in the frontend, debugging a race condition in the async inference pipeline, and optimizing database queries for the vector search layer. It's full-stack engineering with AI at the center.
AI Software Engineer roles are among the most numerous in the AI job market. Every company deploying AI needs software engineers who understand AI integration patterns. The demand is broad, spanning startups to enterprises, across every industry adopting AI capabilities.
Skills Required
Full-stack engineering skills with AI integration experience. Python and TypeScript are the most common requirements. You'll need to understand API design, database architecture, and how to build reliable systems around probabilistic outputs. Experience with streaming, async processing, and caching patterns is increasingly important as real-time AI applications proliferate.
Knowledge of vector databases, embedding APIs, and LLM integration patterns (function calling, structured outputs, retry logic) differentiates AI software engineers from general software engineers. Understanding cost optimization (caching strategies, model routing, batched inference) is valuable since inference costs can dominate application economics.
Strong postings describe the product you'll be building, the AI integration patterns you'll work with, and the scale requirements. Look for companies that have existing AI features and need engineers to improve and expand them, not companies that are 'planning to add AI' someday.
Compensation Benchmarks
AI Software Engineer roles pay a median of $219,250 based on 424 positions with disclosed compensation. Senior-level AI roles across all categories have a median of $230,000. This role's midpoint ($255K) sits 17% above the category median. Disclosed range: $217K to $294K.
Across all AI roles, the market median is $217,500. Top-quartile compensation starts at $272,100. The 90th percentile reaches $325,000. For comparison, the highest-paying categories include AI Safety ($300,000) and Research Engineer ($280,000). By seniority level: Entry: $120,000; Mid: $200,000; Senior: $230,000; Director: $272,150; VP: $250,000.
Coder AI Hiring
Coder has 1 open AI role right now. They're hiring across AI Software Engineer. Based in US. Compensation range: $294K - $294K.
Location Context
AI roles in Austin pay a median of $214,343 across 87 tracked positions.
Career Path
Common paths into AI Software Engineer roles include Software Engineer, Full-Stack Developer, Backend Engineer.
From here, career progression typically leads toward Staff Engineer, AI Architect, Engineering Manager.
If you're a software engineer, you're already 80% there. Learn the AI integration patterns: RAG, streaming inference, function calling, structured outputs. Build a project that demonstrates you can wrap an AI model in a production-quality application with proper error handling, caching, and user experience. That's the portfolio piece that gets you hired.
What to Expect in Interviews
Technical screens look like standard software engineering interviews with an AI twist. Expect system design questions about building reliable applications around probabilistic models: handling streaming responses, implementing retry logic for API failures, and designing caching strategies for LLM outputs. Coding rounds test standard algorithms plus practical integration patterns like async processing and rate limiting.
When evaluating opportunities: Strong postings describe the product you'll be building, the AI integration patterns you'll work with, and the scale requirements. Look for companies that have existing AI features and need engineers to improve and expand them, not companies that are 'planning to add AI' someday.
AI Hiring Overview
The AI job market has 3,708 open positions tracked in our dataset. By seniority: 102 entry-level, 1,705 mid-level, 1,469 senior, and 432 leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level). Remote roles make up 14% of the market (508 positions). The remaining 3,180 roles require on-site or hybrid attendance.
The market median for AI roles is $217,500. Top-quartile compensation starts at $272,100. The 90th percentile reaches $325,000. Highest-paying categories: AI Safety ($300,000 median, 21 roles); Research Engineer ($280,000 median, 147 roles); AI Architect ($254,798 median, 67 roles).
AI Software Engineer roles are among the most numerous in the AI job market. Every company deploying AI needs software engineers who understand AI integration patterns. The demand is broad, spanning startups to enterprises, across every industry adopting AI capabilities.
The AI Job Market Today
The AI job market spans 3,708 open positions across 16 role categories. The largest categories by volume: AI/ML Engineer (2,605), Data Scientist (310), AI Software Engineer (259). These three account for the majority of open positions, though smaller categories often have higher per-role compensation because of specialized skill requirements.
The seniority mix tells a story about where AI teams are in their maturity. Entry-level roles (102) are outnumbered by mid-level (1,705) and senior (1,469) positions, reflecting that most companies are past the 'build a team from scratch' phase and need experienced engineers who can ship production systems. Leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level) total 432 positions, representing the bottleneck between technical execution and organizational strategy.
Remote work availability sits at 14% of all AI roles (508 positions), with 3,180 requiring on-site or hybrid attendance. The remote share has stabilized after the post-pandemic correction. Senior and specialized roles (Research Scientist, ML Architect) are more likely to be remote-eligible than entry-level positions, partly because experienced hires have more negotiating power and partly because these roles require less hands-on mentorship.
AI compensation is structured in clear tiers. The market median sits at $217,500. Top-quartile roles start at $272,100, and the 90th percentile reaches $325,000. These figures include base salary with disclosed compensation. Total compensation (including equity, bonuses, and sign-on) runs 20-40% higher at companies that offer those components.
Category matters for compensation. AI Safety roles lead at $300,000 median, while Prompt Engineer roles sit at $140,000. The spread between highest and lowest-paying categories reflects the premium on specialized technical skills versus broader analytical roles.
The most in-demand skills across all AI postings: Python (1,890 postings), Aws (1,103 postings), Azure (877 postings), Rag (855 postings), Gcp (631 postings), Prompt Engineering (560 postings), Pytorch (545 postings), Claude (498 postings). Python dominates, appearing in the vast majority of role descriptions regardless of category. Cloud platform experience (AWS, GCP, Azure) is the second most common requirement. The newer entrants to the top skills list (RAG, vector databases, LLM APIs) reflect the shift from traditional ML toward generative AI applications.
Frequently Asked Questions
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