Staff AI Engineer - Kairos

Vantora • Remote,

31d • Remote

About The Position

Kairos builds AI agents for manufacturing production scheduling. Its agents monitor production, inventory, and demand signals, identify affected orders, purchase orders, and equipment, and provide planners with recovery options aligned with business priorities. Planners retain final decision-making authority, and Kairos works alongside manufacturers’ existing tools. The product is designed for high-mix, make-to-order, and engineer-to-order manufacturers.

As one of Kairos’s first engineering hires, the Staff Engineer will establish the technical foundation for the company and build systems that bring scheduling agents to production planners. This senior individual-contributor role spans frontend, backend, data, and infrastructure. The engineer will lead through technical ownership and hands-on delivery, translating ambiguous business problems into production-ready solutions without relying on detailed tickets. The team uses AI coding agents as a regular part of development, while engineers remain accountable for shipped code.

The role includes setting foundational architecture; delivering full-stack product features using React, Python/FastAPI, and the data layer; integrating customer ERP, MRP, and production data and building pipelines into Databricks; and helping lead a cloud migration from Azure to GCP. The engineer will also own deployment, observability, and uptime for systems used in customers’ manufacturing operations.

Kairos prioritizes solving the planner’s business problem, simple and durable architecture, transparent and traceable recommendations, configurable customer differences rather than customer-specific code branches, and working across the stack while going deep where needed. The position is remote, with a distributed team centered in the Northeast and some travel potentially required. The Northeast US is preferred.

Requirements

• At least 8 years of hands-on software engineering experience.
• Senior- or staff-level ownership of systems from design through production at scale.
• Strong Python skills and production experience building APIs; FastAPI is preferred.
• Solid frontend skills in React.
• Hands-on cloud infrastructure experience on GCP, Azure, or AWS.
• Experience building data pipelines and working with a modern data platform such as Databricks.
• Experience using AI coding agents for implementation, tests, and refactors, and reviewing their output.
• Ability to turn vague business problems into working system designs and explain trade-offs to technical and nontechnical audiences.
• Sound judgment in choosing simple solutions, challenging unsuitable approaches, and making architecture decisions others can build on.

Nice To Haves

• Next.js experience.
• Experience with a cloud migration.
• Experience at an early-stage or 0-to-1 company.
• Experience in manufacturing, supply chain, ERP/MRP, or scheduling systems.
• Experience building LLM- or agent-powered products.

Responsibilities

• Establish foundational architecture, including system design, data models, service boundaries, and engineering conventions.
• Build and deliver product features end to end, from the React frontend through Python/FastAPI services to the data layer.
• Integrate customer ERP, MRP, and production data.
• Build reliable data pipelines into the Databricks warehouse and ensure agents use trustworthy data.
• Help lead the cloud migration from Azure to GCP.
• Own deployment, observability, and uptime for production systems.
• Translate ambiguous business problems into technical solutions and deliver them to production.
• Use AI coding agents in development while reviewing their output and remaining accountable for shipped code.
• Make and explain architecture decisions and technical trade-offs to engineers and non-engineers.

Benefits

• Competitive compensation and meaningful early-stage equity.
• Healthcare and standard benefits.
• Flexible PTO.
• Founding-level opportunity to shape engineering culture and the technical foundation, with direct access to founders on product and company strategy.
• Production ownership from day one, with code running in real manufacturing operations.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed