Senior Staff Software Engineer, AI and Tools

Change.org

2d•Remote

About The Position

Change.org is forming a new Tools Team to power our next generation of internal systems, automation, and AI enablement. As a Senior Staff Software Engineer, you will architect, drive, and operationalize our most critical AI-powered internal systems — establishing the technical patterns, governance, and long-term foundations that enable teams across Engineering, Product, Operations, MarComms, and the business to work faster and smarter. This role is AI-first and highly strategic: you will turn ambiguous problem spaces into reliable, scalable systems, define standards for agentic workflows and automation, and provide technical leadership that materially elevates the organization’s AI maturity and developer productivity. Change.org is the world’s largest platform for democracy. At a time when dissatisfaction with democracy globally is at an all-time high, we’re investing heavily in using AI to build the most powerful tools in the world to give people greater voice, while bringing people across the political spectrum together to identify shared solutions. Our core petitions platform, used by more than 100 million people annually, is growing rapidly - and we are rebuilding it from the ground-up using new tools to turn anyone into a powerful civic leader on the issues they care about. Soon we will launch a new platform to identify the >80% of issues that most people agree on, locally and nationally, and to mobilize hundreds of millions of people to advocate for those common-ground solutions. To realize this vision, we’re expanding the most talented team in the world at the intersection of technology and social impact - all focused every day on building healthier democracies globally.

Requirements

AI-First Technical Leadership: Demonstrates deep practical experience with AI systems, agentic workflows, and automation architectures. Can evaluate tradeoffs, set direction, and apply judgment in ambiguous spaces.
Architectural Excellence & Systems Thinking: Designs long-term, scalable internal systems that cut across domains; anticipates second-order effects, operational risks, and maintainability concerns.
Full-Stack + Integrations Expertise: Comfortable with end-to-end implementation: frontend prototypes, backend services, integrations with third-party systems, cloud infrastructure, and API ecosystems.
Cross-Functional Influence: Navigates ambiguity, synthesizes complex needs, and persuades diverse stakeholders. Communicates decisions clearly and shapes organizational understanding of AI capabilities.
Enablement Mindset: Builds tools, frameworks, and patterns that multiply the productivity of engineers and non-technical teams; establishes standards rather than just delivering features.
Strategic Prototyping & Rapid Iteration: Can move quickly when needed — exploring, validating, and scaling solutions while balancing short-term experimentation and long-term architectural integrity.
8–12+ years of professional software engineering experience, including substantial experience owning complex systems, platforms, or internal tools.
Demonstrated expertise designing and shipping AI-enabled systems — including experience with LLM APIs, agentic frameworks, orchestration tools, retrieval pipelines, or automated decision systems.
Significant experience integrating with complex third-party systems and designing reliable, secure automation flows.
Experience establishing engineering standards, defining architectural patterns, and guiding teams through major technical or strategic decisions.
Familiarity with security, privacy, data governance, and reliability practices for AI-augmented tools.

Nice To Haves

Experience with vector databases, RAG architectures, or model fine-tuning
Experience with Vercel, Retool, or similar platforms
Prior contributions to open-source AI frameworks or automation tooling
Experience mentoring engineers or shaping organizational technical strategy

Responsibilities

Lead the transformation of ambiguous, cross-functional business needs into well-scoped technical problem statements, and drive the creation of rapid AI-powered proofs of concept that validate direction and inform longer-term architectural decisions.
Define and ship foundational AI and automation architectures (agentic systems, orchestration patterns, governance frameworks) that become organizational standards.
Lead end-to-end delivery of complex AI-driven internal products that integrate deeply with core systems, improving efficiency and decision-making across multiple functions.
Develop and enhance engineering productivity with introduction of new tools, automation, and workflows.
Establish methods, templates, and reusable components that increase the velocity of other engineers and cross-functional teams building automations or AI workflows.
Drive safety, reliability, and human-in-the-loop design across AI systems — creating monitoring, approval, observability, and guardrail frameworks that scale.
Influence and align cross-functional stakeholders (Product, Ops, MarComms, Engineering leadership) around AI strategy, technical direction, and prioritization.
Mentor and level up engineers through architectural guidance, code review, technical design leadership, and thought partnership.
Contribute to Change.org’s AI governance, adoption strategy, and platform decisions including tools like v0 by Vercel, Retool, and internal automation frameworks.
This job is expected to participate in our on call rotation.