Software Engineer, Early Career (AI)

Location: San Francisco, California Workplace: Hybrid WHO WE ARE Notion is the collaborative AI workspace where teams and agents think together https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkpYpWfEK5s. We're building one place where your knowledge, projects, meetings, and AI tools live side by side, so work is faster, clearer, and less fragmented. Millions of individuals, small teams, and large companies run their work on Notion. Notinos (our employees) are customer zero in bringing this future of work to life. We care about craft, building things that last, and the belief that great work is still fundamentally human. Our goal isn’t to ship the next feature. Each and every team of Notinos is working to set the standard for how humans work together in the AI era. From building a business’s system of record to making and managing AI agents to automating away the busy work, we care deeply about giving our customers more time for their life’s work. This is NOT a new grad role! This role is for candidates with 0-2 YOE and can start full time right away. ABOUT THE ROLE As an engineer at Notion, you’ll help shape core user experiences and accelerate how people discover value in Notion. You'll tackle meaningful challenges with increasing autonomy, crafting code that millions of users will experience. You'll take ownership of projects that matter, make critical technical decisions, and contribute your unique perspective to our product vision. Working alongside passionate experts across design, product, and data, you'll help shape the future of how people work. We're looking for an Early Career AI Engineer to join as a strategic partner in shaping Notion's AI vision. You'll work on cutting-edge AI-powered features, leveraging LLMs, embeddings, and other AI technologies to make Notion more intelligent and capable. This role may be aligned to one of multiple AI-focused teams at Notion. Depending on team match and business needs, you could work on: - AI product engineering: building model-powered features end-to-end (UX, APIs, retrieval, orchestration, quality, and reliability) - Model & systems engineering: improving model integration and performance (latency, cost, safety, robustness) and building the infrastructure that supports model serving and experimentation - Evaluation & quality (evals): creating evaluation frameworks and automated/ human-in-the-loop testing to measure and improve model and product quality WHAT YOU’LL ACHIEVE - Partner with your team to prototype and ship an AI-powered product improvement - Own a scoped productionization project: integrate a new model/technique into an existing workflow, add monitoring + guardrails, or improve latency/cost/reliability. - Contribute to evals and iteration loops: build or extend an evaluation set, run experiments, analyze results, and translate learnings into product or system changes. SKILLS YOU'LL NEED TO BRING - You have less than two years of engineering experience. You have solid fundamentals in data structures, algorithms, and distributed systems, with a customer-minded, pragmatic approach to solving problems. - Expertise building and prototyping: You’re excited to build and iterate quickly, and you’ve started exploring AI/ML through coursework, projects, internships, or hackathons. You’re comfortable learning how different parts of a product fit together (UI, APIs, data), have some familiarity with relational databases like Postgres or MySQL, and can take an idea from prototype to a working feature with guidance. - Thoughtful problem-solving: You approach problems holistically, starting with a clear and accurate understanding of the context. You think about the implications of what you're building and how it will impact real people's lives. You can navigate ambiguity successfully, decompose complex problems into clean solutions, while also balancing the business impact of what you’re building. - Impact-driven approach to technology: You see technologies as tools to achieve user impact rather than ends in themselves. You care more about building successful systems that solve real problems than about using specific tech stacks or following trends. You stay current with the latest tools like Cursor, Claude Code, and other AI-assisted development environments, you're pragmatic about choosing the right tool for the job, focusing on what delivers the most value to users and the business. - Proactive communication and high agency: You own your work, communicating clearly about progress and blockers. You don't wait for instructions for every step but rather show initiative in identifying what needs to be done and driving projects forward. You ask questions when needed while independently finding solutions to problems. NICE TO HAVES - You have experience with any part of our technology stack: React, TypeScript, Node.js, Postgres, and Elasticsearch. - You care about the interaction between technology and society, the ways in which they inform each other, and our responsibility as technologists to be conscious of that relationship. - You've heard of computing pioneers like Ada Lovelace, Douglas Engelbart, Alan Kay, and others—and understand why we're big fans of their work. Notion is committed to providing highly competitive cash compensation, equity, and benefits. The compensation offered for this role will be based on multiple factors such as location, the role’s scope and complexity, and the candidate’s experience and expertise, and may vary from the range provided below. For roles based in San Francisco and New York, the estimated base salary range for this role is $130,000-$150,000. By clicking “Submit Application”, I understand and agree that Notion and its affiliates and subsidiaries will collect and process my information in accordance with Notion’s Global Recruiting Privacy Policy https://notion.notion.site/Notion-Global-Recruiting-Privacy-Policy-fc3eb4e829354a26a2bb6fd5e289b550. https://dev.notion.so/a3ce416456924276a59de91bca740028?pvs=21 #LI-Onsite   A NOTE ON AI You don’t need deep AI expertise for every role, but we do expect every Notino to be intellectually curious, drawn to tinkering and discovery, and excited to use AI as a real collaborator in their work. For some roles, AI fluency is a core requirement — when that’s the case, we'll say so explicitly in the qualifications. People who thrive here don’t treat AI as a novelty. They use it to think better, and make their work easier for others to build on. EQUAL OPPORTUNITY & ACCOMMODATIONS We hire talented people from a wide range of backgrounds. If you’re excited about this role but don’t meet every bullet, we still encourage you to apply. Notion is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of any legally protected characteristic. Consistent with applicable law, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records. Notion provides reasonable accommodations during the application process; if you need one, please let your recruiter know. Notion is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate in hiring or any employment decision based on race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), marital status, ancestry, physical or mental disability, genetic information, veteran status, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, or other applicable legally protected characteristic. Notion considers qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law. Notion is also committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities and disabled veterans in our job application procedures. If you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability, please let your recruiter know.