Senior Software Engineer - AI Platform & Experiences at captivateiq

CaptivateIQ is transforming the way companies plan, manage, and optimize sales performance. We started by revolutionizing incentive compensation management, and now we're expanding our platform to solve broader enterprise performance management challenges. Recognized by industry analysts like Forrester and G2 and backed by top-tier investors, including Sequoia, ICONIQ, Accel, and Sapphire Ventures,  we empower high-growth companies like Netflix, Figma, and Stripe with the flexibility and insights needed to drive revenue performance. Join a talented, fast-growing team committed to solving some of the most complex and impactful problems in sales performance management. About the Role  We’re looking for a Senior Software Engineer who thrives at the intersection of AI, product discovery, and early-stage system design. This role is focused on building AI-powered platform capabilities and user experiences from the ground up—where problems are ambiguous, approaches are still being explored, and engineering plays a critical role in shaping what’s possible. You’ll help define how AI shows up in a brand-new EPM product: from internal platforms and abstractions to customer-facing workflows that turn complex data into actionable insight. If you enjoy experimenting with new capabilities, translating emerging technology into real product value, and building systems that enable rapid iteration, this role is for you. What you'll Do • Lead early-phase AI systems: Design and build AI-first user experiences from the ground up, pairing rapid experimentation with strong measurement loops to evaluate performance, relevance, safety, and cost in production. • Influence product direction: Bring an engineering-driven perspective to what we build, how we build it, and which tradeoffs are worth making at early stages—charting a multi-step path that turns quick wins into durable, scalable capabilities. • Design and build scalable AI systems: Once direction is validated, evolve prototypes into reliable, maintainable, and observable production systems, balancing iteration speed with long-term platform health. • Build AI-powered product experiences: Develop AI-assisted modeling and authoring workflows to accelerate plan design, data mapping, and explanation for customers. • Deliver retrieval-augmented insights: Implement contextual help, explainers, and policy Q&A grounded in customer data and system metadata using robust retrieval-augmented generation patterns. • Own guardrails and evaluation: Design and implement evaluation and safety primitives—including offline and online evals, telemetry, human-in-the-loop workflows, safety filters, and red-teaming—to ensure trustworthy AI behavior. • Create reusable AI platform components: Build shared infrastructure for prompt orchestration, hybrid retrieval, caching, tracing, evaluation, and cost/performance controls that enable teams to ship AI features safely and efficiently. • Raise the technical bar: Contribute to architecture, coding standards, testing strategy, and mentoring; promote best practices across AI systems, platform design, and production readiness. What You Bring • 6+ years of software engineering experience shipping production systems in fast-moving environments, including significant ownership of architecture, technical direction, and quality. • Demonstrated success building AI-powered products or platforms in highly exploratory settings (0→1, greenfield initiatives, early AI features), where model choice, system design, and product experience evolved together. • Hands-on experience designing, building, and operating AI systems in production, including: • Integrating LLMs or other models into real user workflows • Designing AI-first or AI-assisted product experiences • Managing inference performance, latency, cost, and reliability • Building feedback loops to continuously improve model behavior • Experience implementing AI evaluation and guardrails, such as: • Offline and online evaluations • Safety filters, policy enforcement, and failure detection • Human-in-the-loop workflows and red-teaming • Telemetry, tracing, and model performance monitoring • Fluency in modern product and platform development, with hands-on experience in Python/Django, TypeScript/JavaScript, React, and PostgreSQL, and the ability to build both backend systems and AI-powered user experiences. • Strong systems and platform thinking, including APIs, data modeling, scalability, observability, and the unique operational challenges of AI-enabled systems. • Sound engineering judgment in AI contexts, balancing rapid experimentation with long-term durability, safety, and maintainability. • High comfort with ambiguity and technical decision-making, able to evaluate multiple AI approaches, articulate tradeoffs, and move work forward without perfect specifications. • Excellent communication skills and product sensibility, with the ability to collaborate deeply with product, design, and stakeholders to translate AI capabilities into real customer value. Why You’ll Love This Role • You’ll help define how AI is productized in a brand-new EPM offering. • You’ll work on both platform foundations and user-facing experiences, with real influence over direction. • You’ll operate in a space where engineering, product, and design are tightly intertwined. • Your work will shape not just features, but the long-term AI strategy and technical foundation of the product. Benefits • (US-ONLY) 100% of medical, dental, and vision covered including 75% for dependents • Flexible vacation days and quarterly mental health days so you can recharge • (US-ONLY) 401k plan to participate in and save towards the future • Newest Apple products to help you do your best work • Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) to support and celebrate the shared identities and life experiences of communities within CaptivateIQ. ERGs directly support our company-wide DEI goals as a space for developing and retaining diverse talent Notice to Prospective Candidates: • Only emails from @captivateiq.com should be trusted. • We are aware of active recruitment scams using the CaptivateIQ name, in which individuals pose as our recruiters and post fake remote job openings and make fake job offers on the Internet. Please note, we will never do the following:Attempt to correspond with a candidate using a free web-based account, such as an email address that ends in @gmail.com, @yahoo.com, @hotmail.com, etc. • Make an offer of employment without conducting multiple rounds of interviews face-to-face using secure video-conferencing technology. • Ask candidates to cash checks to buy equipment on behalf of CaptivateIQ. • Ask candidates to make a payment in order to be considered for a position. • Make early requests for candidates' personal information such as date of birth, passport details, credit card numbers, bank details and social security number, etc. • Please note that we’ll only ask for more sensitive personal information in connection with background checks after an offer is made. • Participate in an on-call rotation to provide after-hours support, ensuring timely resolution of critical issues and maintaining system uptime. CaptivateIQ participates in E-Verify, web-based system that allows enrolled employers to confirm the eligibility of their employees to work in the United States