Staff Engineer

History Factory•Washington DC, DC

5h•Hybrid

About The Position

Staff Engineer (AI & Automation) Job Summary: We are seeking a product-minded Staff Engineer with AI experience to design, build, and maintain production-grade applications and automations that improve operational efficiency across the business. The ideal candidate is fluent across Node.js, Next.js (or other React-based frameworks), Laravel, SQL, and Python; comfortable orchestrating workflows in Zapier; and experienced in integrating with LLM platforms such as the OpenAI API and Google Gemini API. You will use AI coding assistants (e.g., Codex-CLI, Claude Code) responsibly to accelerate delivery while adhering to safe, secure engineering practices. You will also collaborate with Creative, Archives, and Content Development teams to improve their day-to-day workflows using AI: coaching on prompt design and deploying tools such as Gemini CLI and NotebookLM to standardize, document, and accelerate their processes. You will have the opportunity to work with other members of the technology team to assist with this process improvement workstream. You won’t always have all the answers (and that’s okay); we’re looking for a creative problem solver who can break down ambiguous challenges, explore options quickly, and ship pragmatic solutions.

Requirements

4+ years building web applications with Node.js/React/Next.js and internal tools using Python (or equivalent experience).
Demonstrated experience shipping features with AI platforms like OpenAI, Claude, or Google Gemini APIs (chat/tools/function-calling, embeddings).
Hands-on Zapier automation experience (webhooks, code steps, paths; robust retry/error handling).
Strong grounding in secure software practices (OWASP Top 10/ASVS), API design, and relational data modeling (e.g., MySQL / PostgreSQL).
Proficiency with modern tooling: Git/GitHub, CI/CD, containerization (Docker), testing frameworks (e.g., Vitest/Pytest).
Comfort using AI coding assistants (e.g., Codex CLI, Claude Code) responsibly to augment—not replace—engineering rigor.
Excellent communication, documentation, and stakeholder collaboration skills.

Nice To Haves

Creative problem-solving: ability to decompose complex, ambiguous issues, learn unfamiliar domains quickly, and deliver working solutions without perfect information.
Experience coaching non-technical stakeholders on prompt engineering and safe AI usage; hands-on with tools like Claude Code or Gemini CLI/NotebookLM to operationalize team workflows.
Experience with RAG patterns and vector stores (e.g., pgvector, Pinecone), prompt evaluation, and guardrail frameworks.
Familiarity with Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is a plus.
Serverless/edge deployments (e.g., AWS Lambda, Google Cloud Functions) and background jobs/queues.

Responsibilities

Build and maintain production web applications using Node.js, Next.js / React / Vite, Laravel, and Python (services, APIs, and CLIs).
Design and implement AI-powered features (generation, classification, extraction, RAG/embeddings) using frontier models such as OpenAI GPT-5 or Google Gemini.
Create durable workflow automations with Zapier (webhooks, code steps, branching, error handling) to reduce manual processes.
Develop internal scripts to streamline data operations (ETL, file processing, metadata tagging, batch transforms).
Partner with Creative, Archivist, and Content Development teams to map current processes and pilot AI-powered improvements (prompt libraries, Gemini CLI/NotebookLM workbooks, retrieval templates, and Zapier automations); provide lightweight training.
Apply secure coding practices and guardrails: parameterized queries/ORM to prevent SQL injection, input validation/encoding to mitigate XSS/CSRF, SSRF protections, least-privilege access, and secrets management.
Implement prompt- and injection-safety strategies for LLM features (context scoping, output validation, tool/Function Calling allowlists, rate/cost limits).
Integrate with identity and external systems (OAuth/OIDC; Google/Microsoft; SaaS APIs) and document interfaces with OpenAPI/Swagger.
Instrument systems for reliability (logging, metrics, tracing), add tests (unit/integration), and maintain CI/CD checks.
Collaborate with cross-functional partners (Product, Marketing, Operations) to translate ambiguous needs into shippable solutions with measurable impact.
Produce clear documentation (READMEs, runbooks, postmortems) and contribute to coding standards and reusable components.