Staff Software Developer – AI Products

Location: British Columbia Workplace: Hybrid Safe Software is looking for an experienced developer to join our Cloud Applications team and take a leading technical role in our FME AI Service, AI Assist Plugin, and future AI product offerings. This is deliberately a hybrid role. We need the software engineering depth to build and operate production services, alongside the experimental instinct to determine empirically what makes an LLM-based agentic system work. Many of the problems don't have standard solutions yet, so you'll be the person who designs the experiment, measures the result, and turns the finding into a shipped improvement. We have an immediate opening and are excited to find the right candidate to join our team. ABOUT THE TEAM As a member of our Cloud Applications development team, you will take technical leadership of designing and developing new features, as well as maintaining existing functionalities in our products. You will primarily work in Python (FastAPI and LangChain), with a willingness to learn new languages and technologies as needed. You will also contribute to support our live applications. The team practices agile development and utilizes Kanban boards to manage their backlog, epics and stories. As a Staff Software Developer - AI Products, you will regularly participate in team meetings (stand-ups, planning), lead technical decision-making processes, and work closely with our Product Managers, UX Designers, and QA, as well as Customer Experience team members who review live traces from AI applications. WHAT YOU’LL BE DOING As a Staff AI Developer, you will: - Design and build server-side services and APIs (FastAPI). - Design and build modular agentic workflows to augment the FME platform capabilities. - Stay up to speed with developments in AI and LLM tooling, and incorporate relevant ideas into our products. - Participate in every aspect of the development cycle, including shaping specifications with the product owner, developing clean and maintainable code, writing unit and integration tests, doing code reviews, and maintaining and improving existing code. - Collaborate, support, and share expertise with other team members. - Work closely with the product owner and design team to deliver a high quality and consistent user experience. - Maintain and continuously improve the building and delivery of our AI service to reduce query latency and improve assistant response quality. - Investigate, evaluate the impact, and resolve anomalies and bugs in live applications. - Participate in the team’s light on-call rotation to support live applications. QUALIFICATIONS, SKILLS, AND COMPETENCIES Safers come from a variety of backgrounds with a diversity in skills and knowledge. That said, we find that those who are most successful in this role have experience with the following areas. Background - Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent experience. - Typically, at least 7 years of experience working on production backend systems. - A track record of leading technically ambiguous projects and raising the capability of the engineers around you. Technical skills - Project or work experience with agentic LLM-based applications, including techniques such as RAG, prompt and context engineering, and tool calling. - Demonstrated experience evaluating LLM systems: building eval sets, defining quality metrics, and tracing and debugging non-deterministic behaviour. - Depth in at least one modern backend language, and the ability to pick up others as the work demands. - Experience with a modern backend web framework such as FastAPI. How you Work - An empirical mindset — comfort designing and running experiments to reach a decision, rather than reasoning about which approach should be best. - Strong interest in the craft, a curious mind, and eagerness to learn new tools and technologies. - Able to explain technical tradeoffs clearly to teammates and stakeholders. - Excellent organizational skills, with the judgment to prioritize your own work efficiently. - Resourcefulness and the ability to work well in a team-based environment. DESIRED SKILLS / BONUS POINTS We don't expect any single candidate to have all of these. Evaluation and experimentation: - Familiarity with LLM evaluation libraries such as Ragas, DeepEval, openevals, promptfoo, Inspect, or TruLens. - Experience with LLM observability and tracing tooling such as LangSmith, Langfuse, Braintrust, or Arize Phoenix. - Statistical literacy: A/B testing, significance, and sample sizing for model and prompt comparisons. - A background in machine learning or data science, or experience collaborating closely with those who do. - Experience with the problem domain: FME, other ETL tools, spatial data processing, or data integration. Retrieval and infrastructure: - Working knowledge of embeddings, vector databases (e.g. pgvector), and chunking and retrieval strategy. - Experience with Docker and deploying applications on Kubernetes. - Experience working with services from a cloud provider, such as AWS, GCP, or Azure. - Understanding of common client and server side vulnerabilities (e.g. OWASP Top 10) as well as security vulnerabilities specific to LLM–based applications. WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT When you choose a career with Safe Software, you’re also choosing… - Meaningful Work: Make a profound impact across our business, workplace and data integration product. - A Supportive Environment: Feel empowered to share your ideas and implement them with high autonomy and team support. - Social Responsibility: Become part of a team that finds meaningful ways to give back https://www.safe.com/about/community-initiatives/. Take paid time off to volunteer for one of our Safe-organized opportunities that align with our core community initiatives. - Learning & Career Development: We believe in your continuous learning and growth. Take advantage of an annual learning budget and training programs paid for by Safe. - Flexible Working Hours: Flexible and remote-friendly work arrangements to fit your lifestyle. Work when you want, and how you want to. - Work-Life Balance: There's no place for burnout at Safe. Maintain a healthy balance of your personal and work life without splitting yourself in two. Enjoy 3 weeks of vacation to recharge, plus an additional paid 6 seasonal days off per year. - Health & Wellness: Extended health, dental, health or lifestyle spending, and counseling benefits from day 1. That’s right, no waiting period. - Family is important: We are dedicated to supporting our employees through parenthood and offer a Parental Leave Top-Up Program for new parents through childbirth or adoption. - Shared Success: Share in Safe’s success with our bi-annual profit sharing and RRSP/TFSA matching program. - An Accessible Commute: Regardless of your commute method, we’re located close to public transit, and provide complimentary parking and bike storage for our team! ABOUT SAFE SOFTWARE Safe Software transforms organizations with FME, the only All-Data Any-AI Enterprise Integration Platform connecting all your data, anywhere, at any velocity. With over 30 years of expertise and 25,000+ enterprise customers across 125+ countries, we simplify your data journey, wherever it leads. Founded in 1993, Safe is headquartered in Surrey, BC with over 300 team members and counting. We’re always looking for talented individuals with diverse backgrounds who are determined to learn and grow. Are you ready to join the team? OUR COMMITMENT TO DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION Safe Software is an equal opportunity employer and we truly believe that innovation and strength begin with diversity and inclusion. We welcome all candidates regardless of race, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, ability, disability, national or ethnic origin, political belief, religion, or family status. Should you require accommodations during the recruitment process, please contact hr_dept@safe.com. NOTICE REGARDING USE OF AUTOMATED TOOLS IN HIRING At Safe Software, we use automated tools to help us process applications and identify qualified candidates. These tools may assist in screening resumes and summarizing interview content based on the information you provide. This helps our team review applications efficiently while ensuring every candidate is considered based on the requirements of the role. Please be assured that the final hiring decision is always made by a member of our team. For more information on how we protect your privacy, please see our policy https://www.safe.com/legal/#applicant-privacy-policy. If you have questions about this process, please contact us at hr_dept@safe.com.