Staff Software Engineer - AI

About the role:

8am is looking for a Staff level Engineer to join our team of seasoned AI engineers who are delivering on the roadmap of AI features to enhance and expand our 8am suite of products. In this role, you will design and build AI-powered features that delight our customers, create new capabilities, and strengthen our platform. You will collaborate with engineers, product managers, and data scientists to bring cutting-edge AI into production, ensuring it drives meaningful business and customer outcomes.

About us:

At 8am, our vision is to power a world where professionals thrive. We start every day on a mission to empower professionals with the most trusted, innovative technology to deliver world-class outcomes for their clients and exceptional financial results for their business. They count on our purpose-built solutions to simplify operations, ensure compliance, and fuel profitable growth, so they can focus on their clients and do more of the work that matters.

Founded in 2005, 8am™ (formerly AffiniPay) is the professional business platform built to help legal, accounting, and other client-focused professionals run stronger, more profitable businesses. Today, more than 250,000 professionals across the U.S. trust 8am to help them work smarter, serve clients better, and unlock their full potential. We have been recognized as one of Inc 5000’s fastest growing companies in the U.S. for 13 years in a row, and as a result, our teams continue to grow as well!

What you'll do:

• Collaborate with product managers and stakeholders to translate business problems into AI-driven solutions.
• Design, implement, and integrate AI features into existing 8am products.
• Partner with the Data team to ensure the right data is collected, enriched, prepared, and staged for AI consumption and use.
• Build and evaluate AI-powered services, from customer-facing prototypes to general availability to all our customers.
• Write high-quality Python code to manipulate data, interact with large language models, and assess performance.
• Develop tools and infrastructure to support reliable, scalable, and secure AI deployment.
• Work with our cloud operations team to deploy AI features, monitor their impact, and continuously improve them.

About you:

• 10+ years of professional software engineering experience, ideally in full stack SaaS application development or backend.
• Proven track record of building and deploying production-ready AI/ML services at scale.
• Hands-on experience with LLM frameworks, platforms, evals and related tooling.
• Strong Python or equivalent modern tech stack development skills and familiarity with data manipulation and evaluation workflows.
• Experience building scalable data infrastructure and integrating models into broader SaaS systems.
• Experience working in AWS cloud environments, or equivalent and with modern DevOps practices.
• Demonstrated experience leveraging AI tools and technologies to improve workflows, enhance decision-making, or drive innovation.
  
• Demonstrated experience leveraging AI tools and technologies to improve workflows, enhance decision-making, or drive innovation.

Additional Information
The annual salary range for this position is $150,000 to $190,000. The salary range for performing this role outside of the US / Austin / California may differ.  8am is committed to offering competitive, fair and commensurate compensation and has provided an estimated pay range for this role. Actual compensation may vary based on job-related knowledge, skills, experience and education.

Why 8am: 

At 8am, our culture is shaped by the people who bring it to life every day. Together, we build a company rooted in continuous learning, genuine community, holistic wellness, and meaningful engagement—values that empower us as individuals and unite us as a team. Our culture is grounded in our core values: Work Smart, Win Fast; Outshine Ordinary, and We Find a Way. These values drive how we serve our customers and work with each other in a collaborative, inspiring, and empowering environment, every day.

Here’s how we support our 8Team:

• Health Insurance Coverage: We offer our 8Team a variety of medical, dental, and vision plans, designed to fit your needs, including a 100% company-paid HDHP plan for employees.
• Financial perks: We offer a competitive compensation and benefits package including annual bonuses, equity options and 401(k) or RRSP if in Canada, with a company match for all team members.
• Time for what matters: Flexible Time Off, paid holidays, and a parental leave program for our new parents.
• Wellness: Wellness stipends, mental health support, and one-on-one nutrition coaching.
• Learning and Development: Continuous learning through 8am.edu, leadership programs, professional development funds, and individually focused talent development.
• Giving back to the communities around us: Participate in our charitable matching gift program, paid time off for volunteer service, and company-sponsored volunteer events (both local and virtually).
• Engagement: Virtual and in-person team-building events, quarterly award recognition through our Rise & Shine Award of Excellence Program, and our peer-to-peer appreciation platform.

At 8am, we don’t just offer benefits - we create an environment where people can thrive, grow, and make a real impact every day.

Diversity, equity & inclusion at 8am:

At 8am, we recognize that innovation occurs with a strong team of people who are diverse in background, personality, talent and ideas. Experience comes in many forms and ensuring a diverse and inclusive workplace where we continue to learn from each other is an integral part of our culture. We are committed to creating a welcoming and transparent environment for all that embraces those differences through education, equal access to opportunities and information, inclusionary programs, and community outreach. 

Security advisory:

Our hiring teams at 8am are dedicated to recruiting top talent that share our passion for serving the professional services industry through innovative financial technology.  As such, our Talent Acquisition Team only follows legitimate hiring practices.  We will always communicate with our candidates using emails with the 8am domain and will never ask for sensitive/personal data during the application process.  All interviews take place over phone call, Zoom/Google Meet or in person.  All offers are communicated verbally by our Talent Acquisition Specialists with a written offer letter as a follow up.