Software Engineer, Applied AI

About the company

Clera is a talent-matching platform that replaces traditional job applications by connecting candidates and hiring teams through curated introductions.

About this role

ABOUT THE ROLE We're a small, ambitious team at the intersection of private market investing and artificial intelligence. This is an early- to mid-career software engineering role focused on building applied AI systems at the application layer — shipping agent-powered features, full-stack apps, and durable workflows that power real, economically valuable work. You'll take meaningful ownership of production systems that translate rapidly improving model capabilities into dependable tools, while helping shape the technical foundation and culture of a tight-knit engineering team. You'll receive direct user feedback and lead substantial projects across product, agents, data, and infrastructure. This role is on-site in San Francisco, CA. Candidates must be based there or willing to relocate. No visa sponsorship is available — applicants must be eligible to work in the United States without sponsorship. WHAT YOU'LL DO - Build production systems spanning agent architectures, full-stack applications, durable workflows, and data infrastructure. - Own system design, deployment, and iteration for agent-powered features end to end. - Evaluate new models, frameworks, tool-use patterns, and context strategies — then productionize the improvements that matter. - Build evaluation pipelines, observability tooling, and human-review systems that make agent behavior measurable and reliable. - Develop durable workflows and data infrastructure handling tool coordination, state management, retries, and failure recovery. - Design and implement interfaces that make complex agent workflows clear, fast, and intuitive for end users. - Lead substantial projects across product, agents, data, and infrastructure with direct exposure to user feedback. - Help shape the engineering culture and technical direction of a small, high-ownership team. WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR Required: - A few years of software engineering experience with strong fundamentals and a demonstrated track record of shipping production systems. - Experience building full-stack applications and owning features end to end. - Hands-on experience with LLM applications, AI agents, tool use, evaluations, or related applied AI systems. - Experience designing and delivering production-grade software for AI agents — from concept through deployment. - Familiarity with building and maintaining durable workflows, stateful coordination, retries, and failure recovery for tool integrations. - Experience implementing observability, monitoring, and reliability practices for AI systems (e.g., metrics, tracing, dashboards). - Ability to design user-facing interfaces for complex agent workflows and iterate based on user feedback. - High agency, strong product judgment, and comfort moving across product, backend, data, and infrastructure. - Genuine curiosity about agent developments with the judgment to separate meaningful advances from hype. - Comfort operating in a small team environment with broad problem scope and incomplete specs. Nice to Have: - Background in fintech, financial data, or capital markets. - Experience at early-stage startups. - Experience with durable workflow orchestration systems. - Experience building human-in-the-loop systems. - Experience handling sensitive or permissioned data. COMPENSATION & BENEFITS - Salary: $150,000 – $250,000 annually, depending on experience. - Equity participation in a small, high-conviction team. - Close collaboration with a tight-knit team on high-impact, production AI systems. LOCATION This is a full-time, on-site role in San Francisco, CA. Candidates must be based in San Francisco or genuinely willing to relocate. Remote or hybrid arrangements are not available for this position. Visa sponsorship is not available. Candidates must be authorized to work in the United States without sponsorship, now or in the future.