Staff Software Engineer (AI-Native Platform)

Join First American Title Insurance Co as a Staff Software Engineer to lead AI platform and distributed systems initiatives across engineering teams.

Responsibilities

• Lead technical initiatives spanning multiple teams, products, and domains; set architectural direction and align organizations around shared approaches
• Guide long-term technical investments to improve organizational scalability, reliability, and developer productivity
• Navigate ambiguity and resolve competing priorities by building consensus with engineering, product, and business stakeholders
• Design and evolve AI development practices and help drive the creation of AI powered products for the organization
• Define architecture for large-scale, distributed systems across multiple services, domains, and business capabilities
• Establish architectural consistency across APIs, event-driven systems, cloud infrastructure, reliability, security, observability, and operational excellence
• Simplify complex systems using abstractions and reusable patterns
• Set engineering standards that raise software quality organization-wide
• Lead architectural reviews and influence design decisions, including pragmatic tradeoffs across speed, simplicity, scalability, reliability, and cost
• Champion modern engineering practices such as AI-assisted software development, automated testing, observability, continuous delivery, and platform engineering
• Multiply the impact of senior engineers and technical leads through coaching, architectural guidance, and design mentorship
• Support engineers in improving system thinking, technical judgment, and decision-making, fostering a culture of curiosity, ownership, and continuous improvement
• Drive initiatives that improve organizational reliability, resiliency, security, and operational maturity
• Define reusable engineering patterns for observability, production diagnostics, AI evaluation, latency budgets, cost optimization, incident response, resiliency, and governance
• Establish measurable engineering standards to improve production system health over time
• Partner across engineering leadership, product management, solution architecture, security, platform engineering, infrastructure, and AI practitioners to translate business strategy into scalable solutions
• Influence decisions using technical expertise, data, and clear communication rather than organizational authority

Requirements

• 8+ years of experience designing and building production software systems, including significant experience leading large-scale technical initiatives
• Proven experience driving architecture across multiple teams, services, or business domains
• Deep experience building cloud-native distributed systems using modern software engineering practices
• Experience designing and operating production AI systems, including LLM-powered applications and agentic workflows
• Strong background creating reusable engineering platforms, frameworks, libraries, or shared infrastructure adopted by multiple teams
• Expertise designing APIs, event-driven architectures, and highly available distributed systems
• Experience establishing engineering standards, architectural patterns, and operational best practices across organizations
• Demonstrated ability to lead technical direction through influence rather than direct management
• Deep understanding of AI operational concerns, including evaluation strategies, model selection, latency optimization, cost management, observability, governance, and safety
• Experience designing AI development workflows that improve productivity with responsible use of AI-assisted development tools such as Cursor, Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, or similar
• Strong understanding of software architecture, cloud infrastructure, reliability engineering, and platform design
• Excellent communication skills for explaining complex concepts to technical and non-technical audiences
• Proven ability to mentor senior engineers and elevate engineering organizations through coaching and technical leadership
• Strong systems thinking with an outcome-oriented mindset focused on durable organizational leverage

Technologies

• Cursor, Claude Code, GitHub Copilot
• OpenAI, Azure OpenAI, Anthropic, Databricks
• C# (.NET), Python, TypeScript, Go, Java
• Kubernetes, Docker
• Terraform, CDK
• OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog

Benefits

• Medical, dental, vision
• 401k
• PTO/paid sick leave
• Employee stock purchase plan

Ideally, you’ll also have experience with

• Enterprise AI platforms including OpenAI, Azure OpenAI, Anthropic, and Databricks
• C# (.NET), Python, TypeScript, Go, Java, or similar languages
• Kubernetes, Docker, and modern platform engineering practices
• Infrastructure as Code using Terraform, CDK, or similar tooling
• Observability platforms including OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, or similar
• Large-scale platform modernization or cloud migration initiatives
• Highly regulated industries such as Financial Services, Insurance, Healthcare, or similar

What we offer

• First American Title Insurance Co is an equal opportunity employer
• Based on eligibility, a comprehensive benefits package including medical, dental, vision, 401k, PTO/paid sick leave, and an employee stock purchase plan

Location

• Santa Ana, CA (remote)

Compensation

• USD 148,600 - 198,200 per year