Staff Software Engineer, AI - Squad Team

About the Role

We are building a new elite Squad Team: a small, high-leverage engineering group focused on fast-moving, high-priority AI initiatives across Ironclad.

This is not a traditional team tied to one surface area for years. Instead, the Squad Team is designed to move quickly across product and platform boundaries: incubating new AI capabilities, accelerating strategic bets, unblocking critical delivery gaps, and helping bring promising ideas from concept to production.

As a member of the Squad Team, you will be one of the technical anchors for this effort, and report to VP Engineering of AI. You will work across multiple codebases (including starting new ones) and domains, partner closely with product and engineering leaders, and help us execute some of the company’s most important AI initiatives. You should be excited about ambiguity, energized by fast context switching, and motivated by building real products that deliver customer value quickly.

We have multiple roles open, and hiring a range of levels. This is the right role for people who are high-agency builders who combine strong technical depth with product sense, urgency, and excellent judgment.

What You’ll Do

• Lead the design and delivery of high-priority AI initiatives across Ironclad, from early prototype through production launch.
• Rapidly ramp into new systems, codebases, and problem areas, and drive execution with minimal hand-holding.
• Incubate new product ideas in areas such as contract AI, agentic workflows, intelligent extraction, search, and automation.
• Partner closely with product, design, legal domain experts, and go-to-market teams to turn customer needs into shipped product.
• Raise the engineering bar through strong technical judgment, crisp execution, and pragmatic use of AI-assisted development tools.
• Identify organizational or technical bottlenecks and help close them, whether by building, debugging, simplifying, or unblocking teams.
• Mentor other engineers through hands-on leadership, code reviews, technical direction, and example-setting.
• Help shape how Ironclad builds with modern AI systems, including evals, orchestration, prompting, retrieval, and production quality standards.

What We’re Looking For

Leadership and Execution

• Significant experience building and shipping production software in fast-paced environments.
• A strong track record of leading ambiguous, cross-functional efforts and turning them into concrete outcomes.
• High agency and ownership: you see gaps, form a point of view, and drive things forward.
• Strong bias to action, with the ability to balance speed and quality.
• Excellent collaboration skills and low ego; you work well by influence, not just authority.

Technical Strength

• Strong software engineering fundamentals, especially in backend systems and distributed systems.
• Ability to learn unfamiliar systems quickly and be productive in codebases you did not originally build.
• Experience building AI-powered product features, platforms, or internal developer systems.
• Familiarity with modern LLM application patterns such as agentic workflows, retrieval, evals, tool use, and quality/error analysis.
• Comfort using AI coding tools to accelerate development, while maintaining engineering rigor and sound judgment.

Product Mindset

• Strong product instinct and customer empathy.
• You care not just about whether a system works, but whether it solves an important user problem.
• Excitement about iterating quickly, learning from real usage, and improving product quality over time.

Why This Role Is DifferentThe Squad Team is meant to be a force multiplier for the organization. You won’t be limited to one narrow lane. You’ll help us:

• incubate new AI product bets
• accelerate critical initiatives
• fill execution gaps where speed and technical depth matter most
• bring strong engineering craftsmanship to the company’s most strategic work

This role is a great fit for someone who loves operating like a founder inside a company: moving quickly, solving hard problems, and creating leverage wherever it matters most.

What Success Looks Like

In this role, success means you

• help launch meaningful new AI capabilities faster
• unblock important initiatives across teams
• elevate execution quality wherever you engage
• become a trusted technical leader for high-priority, cross-cutting work
• help Ironclad build durable advantage in contract AI

Base Salary Ranges

• Staff: $210,000 - $260,000

The base salary range represents the minimum and maximum of the salary range for this position based at our San Francisco headquarters. The actual base salary offered for this position will depend on numerous factors, including individual proficiency, anticipated performance, and the location of the selected candidate. Our base salary is just one component of Ironclad’s competitive total rewards package, which also includes equity awards (a new hire grant, along with opportunities for additional awards throughout your tenure), competitive health and wellness benefits, and a commitment to career growth and development.