Chief Engineer (Staff Engineer)

San Francisco. Posted 4 months ago

The role

The Chief Engineer owns a domain end-to-end by architecting and building systems. You will lead a pod, hold a weekly council seat with founders, and partner with a Domain PM to deliver technical outcomes.

What you will do

Design systems and write code for your domain
Set the technical standard by example
Ship, review, and maintain quality and velocity across domain pods
Steer and unblock engineers and leads in your domain
Partner with Domain PM on domain outcomes and impact
Build using frontier models and embed AI development tools as standard practice

Required qualifications

Senior-most individual contributor (Staff level) or hands-on technical founder
Experience owning a critical domain or system end-to-end at high scale or at a high-velocity Series A–D startup
Deep technical credibility to drive major technical decisions without direct authority
Ability to architect, review, and build code
Extreme AI fluency using frontier AI tools daily
First-principles problem-solving
High learning velocity
Tolerance for ambiguity and startup pace
Strong systems and reliability instincts with ownership of production systems at scale
BS/BA in Computer Science

Nice to have

MS or PhD
Conversational AI, voice AI, or agentic systems built and run at production scale
Fintech, banking, or regulated financial services background
A 0→1 platform, system, or product that others went on to build on
Published writing, conference talks, or open-source work in AI systems or platform engineering

Benefits

100% paid health, dental & vision care
401(k) & financial wellness perks
Daily meals
Commuter benefit
Monthly wellness stipend
Claude Enterprise + frontier AI tools
Brand-new 21st-floor SF office
Discretionary PTO
Paid parental leave
Mental health, wellness & family benefits
Founding-team-tier equity
Top-of-market base

Before you apply

H1B transfers welcome

About the company

interface.ai is the agentic AI platform for financial services, serving over 100 banks and credit unions. The company is cash-flow positive and backed by $30M in Series A funding.