Software Engineer, Agent - Public Sector

About the company

Sierra is an AI startup that builds agentic platforms and tools to power AI-driven customer experiences and autonomous agents.

About this role

ABOUT US At Sierra, we’re building a platform to enable every company in the world to build better, more human customer experiences with AI. We partner with industry leaders such as SoftBank, Uber, Rivian, CLEAR, and Sutter Health. We are primarily an in-person company based in San Francisco, with growing offices across North America, Europe, and Asia. We are guided by a set of values that are at the core of our actions and define our culture: Trust, Customer Obsession, Craftsmanship, Intensity, and Family. These values are the foundation of our work, and we are committed to upholding them in everything we do. Our co-founders are Bret Taylor https://www.linkedin.com/in/brettaylor/ and Clay Bavor https://www.linkedin.com/in/claybavor/. Bret currently serves as Board Chair of OpenAI. Previously, he was co-CEO of Salesforce (which had acquired the company he founded, Quip) and CTO of Facebook. Bret was also one of Google's earliest product managers and co-creator of Google Maps. Before founding Sierra, Clay spent 18 years at Google, where he most recently led Google Labs. Earlier, he started and led Google’s AR/VR effort, Project Starline, and Google Lens. Before that, Clay led the product and design teams for Google Workspace.  ABOUT THE PUBLIC SECTOR TEAM - Sierra recently received FedRAMP High https://sierra.ai/blog/certified-fedramp-high certification, enabling us to bring our industry-leading technology to partners in the US public sector. We’re now building our founding public sector team to redefine the relationship between the government and its citizenry. - Today, our agents already enable citizens to access social services, report fraud, and understand complex government systems. Simultaneously, they empower government officials to better hear the concerns and inquiries of their constituencies. - We are explicitly nonpartisan and committed to empowering public servants to leverage AI to advance their important missions. - In our journey, we are guided by a set of values that are at the core of our actions and define our culture: Trust, Customer Obsession, Craftsmanship, Intensity, and Family. These values are the foundation of our work, and we are committed to upholding them in everything we do. WHAT YOU’LL DO - Design and build production-grade AI agents for government institutions at the Federal and state level. - Partner closely with industry leadership to build our public sector team, including our capture motion, market strategy, and product components to scale quickly. - Work closely with institutions to understand their most urgent needs and identify novel opportunities to expand our impact - for example through outbound contacts or long-horizon agents. - Build the future of the platform: Your direct work with public sector customers will guide the evolution of Sierra's core platform. You'll surface unmet needs, prototype new tools and features, and collaborate with research, product, and platform to shape the future of AI agent development. WHAT YOU'LL BRING - Full stack software development skills and familiarity with AI development processes. - A passion for public sector work and a faith in the potential of our institutions to transform outcomes for their constituents. - Comfort working directly with customers to understand their needs and solve real-world problems. A core part of the role is coordinating directly with public servants at our partners to understand their workflows. EVEN BETTER… - Experience building conversational or long-horizon agents using proprietary or open source frameworks. - Demonstrated track record ambiguity, for example as part of a founding team, new initiative at a large enterprise, forward deployed engineering, or elsewhere. - A prior understanding of government work and its complexities, including procurement, regulation, and patterns of partnership. OUR VALUES - Trust: We build trust with our customers with our accountability, empathy, quality, and responsiveness. We build trust in AI by making it more accessible, safe, and useful. We build trust with each other by showing up for each other professionally and personally, creating an environment that enables all of us to do our best work. - Customer Obsession: We deeply understand our customers’ business goals and relentlessly focus on driving outcomes, not just technical milestones. Everyone at the company knows and spends time with our customers. When our customer is having an issue, we drop everything and fix it. - Craftsmanship: We get the details right, from the words on the page to the system architecture. We have good taste. When we notice something isn’t right, we take the time to fix it. We are proud of the products we produce. We continuously self-reflect to continuously self-improve. - Intensity: We know we don’t have the luxury of patience. We play to win. We care about our product being the best, and when it isn’t, we fix it. When we fail, we talk about it openly and without blame so we succeed the next time. - Family: We know that balance and intensity are compatible, and we model it in our actions and processes. We are the best technology company for parents. We support and respect each other and celebrate each other’s personal and professional achievements. WHAT WE OFFER We want our benefits to reflect our values and offer the following to full-time employees: - Flexible (unlimited) paid time off - Medical, dental, and vision benefits for you and your family - Life insurance and disability benefits - Retirement plan dependent on country of employment - Parental leave - Fertility and family building benefits through Carrot - Lunch, as well as delicious snacks and coffee to keep you energized  - Discretionary benefit stipend giving people the ability to spend where it matters most - Free alphorn lessons These benefits are further detailed in Sierra's policies, may vary by region, and are subject to chang