Staff Engineer, Agent Productivity

About the role

You are responsible for architecting and owning the developer-productivity platform that allows both human engineers and AI agents to operate at maximum efficiency across the Ambience stack. This role demands extreme ownership of the entire development lifecycle from local coding environments through production-grade verification and release pipelines. You will design systems that make agents reliable collaborators rather than mere code generators by focusing on infrastructure, ergonomics, and safety. The position requires deep collaboration with product and engineering teams to ensure internal tools remove friction and amplify impact across all engineering workflows. You will translate complex operational requirements into intuitive platform primitives that enable fast, safe, and auditable development at scale. Success in this role is measured by the quality, adoption, and reliability of the infrastructure you build for both humans and agents. You will operate with clarity and candor in a high-ownership environment where the problems you solve directly affect patient care and health system outcomes.

Key facts

What you'll do

Define and own the end-to-end developer experience for Ambience, including local development environments, database workflows, Docker-based tooling, dependency management, and secure handling of agent ergonomics.

Champion build, test, and CI systems by driving initiatives that reduce flaky tests, improve failure diagnostics, align local validation with remote CI behavior, and shorten feedback loops for engineers and agents.

Design and implement verification infrastructure that provides reusable checks for high-risk activities such as frontend flows, database migrations, schema changes, integration paths, API contracts, and structured evidence collection to enable trusted agent-generated code.

Create and maintain internal tooling that replaces ad hoc scripts and tribal knowledge with paved-road workflows, including CLIs, project scaffolds, code templates, migration helpers, and release automation that makes the correct workflow the easiest workflow.

Establish agent tool access policies and systems that provide scoped, auditable permissions for local databases, browsers, GitHub, CI pipelines, logs, and documentation while enforcing strict controls around PHI and production data.

Collaborate closely with product and engineering leadership to identify platform gaps, propose robust solutions, and deliver components that unblock multiple teams across the organization.

Measure and improve platform health through observability, developer feedback, and iterative enhancements that increase reliability, performance, and usability for both human and agent users.

Champion security and compliance practices by translating risk assessments into concrete platform controls that protect sensitive data without impeding developer velocity.

Drive adoption of new tools and practices by demonstrating clear value, creating high-quality documentation, and partnering with engineers to ensure smooth integration into daily workflows.

Contribute to technical strategy by evaluating emerging tooling, proposing architectural improvements, and representing Ambience in broader industry discussions on developer productivity and AI-assisted development.

Requirements

You hold a Bachelor's degree and bring 7+ years of professional software engineering experience with Staff-level impact across multiple teams and codebases.

You possess deep experience designing, building, and scaling developer productivity, platform, CI, test, or internal tooling systems that have been widely adopted by engineering organizations.

You demonstrate strong backend and platform fundamentals in languages such as TypeScript, Rust, Go, or Python, with the ability to write high-quality, maintainable code across these stacks.

You are a daily user of AI-assisted development tools such as Claude Code, Cursor, or Codex on real production codebases and understand their strengths, weaknesses, and failure modes.

You maintain clear, actionable opinions on where AI agents provide meaningful value, where they introduce risk, and what infrastructure is required to make them reliable and safe in production contexts.

You exhibit sound security judgment, with the ability to translate abstract risk into practical controls that protect sensitive systems while still enabling fast development.

You are willing to work from the Ambience San Francisco office 3 days per week to foster close collaboration, in-person learning, and strong team cohesion.

You communicate effectively with both technical and non-technical stakeholders, articulating complex platform decisions with clarity and empathy.

You are comfortable operating in ambiguous, fast-moving environments while maintaining rigorous standards for reliability, safety, and documentation.

You are passionate about building long-term infrastructure that outlasts individual projects and enables many teams to deliver with confidence.

Nice to have

Experience building and operating large-scale internal platforms or developer tooling in highly regulated environments such as healthcare or finance.

Background working with clinical or medical data systems and familiarity with healthcare workflows, compliance regimes, and data sensitivity requirements.

Contributions to open-source developer tools, platform projects, or widely used infrastructure libraries that demonstrate thought leadership in the space.

Practical notes

This role follows a hybrid schedule in the San Francisco office, requiring presence 3 days per week.

Compensation and equity are provided in alignment with Ambience's pay transparency policy, with base targets in the range of approximately $250,000-$300,000 per year, exclusive of equity.

Candidates who do not fall precisely within the stated base range are still encouraged to apply, as Ambience takes an individualized approach to compensation based on experience, scope, and personal circumstances.

The responsibilities described here reflect the current needs of the Ambience engineering organization and may evolve as the company grows and priorities shift.