Staff Engineer

Artisan Management LLC•Asheville, NC

4d•Remote

About The Position

Artisan Studios is seeking a Staff Engineer for a senior individual contributor role spanning teams and client engagements across the engineering organization. The Staff Engineer sets technical direction and standards, identifies delivery and technical risks early, and contributes hands-on where projects need support. Leadership is exercised through technical judgment, standards, and direct work rather than direct reports. The role owns the Spec-Driven Development playbook and AI-assisted development standards, demonstrating effective practices, measuring adoption, and improving them with teams. It also supports technical presales and client escalations, mentors team leads and senior engineers, defines the technical hiring bar, and supports engineering security and compliance work, including SOC 2 controls and evidence. The role is designed to grow into Director of Engineering, with increasing organizational leadership responsibilities such as delivery health, engineering strategy, and people leadership. Artisan Studios is a remote-first digital innovation consultancy whose work includes application and infrastructure modernization, cloud migration, AI engineering, and end-to-end product development. The position offers flexible working hours and remote work environments. Quarterly travel may be required depending on client responsibilities.

Requirements

10 or more years of software engineering experience, including 3 or more years as a senior engineer, tech lead, or architect across several teams.
Experience setting technical direction for several teams without direct authority.
Experience in consulting or professional services, including solution architecture, estimates, statements of work, and client delivery.
Strong hands-on background in cloud-native systems on AWS, including architecture and coding.
Daily hands-on use of AI coding agents such as Cursor or Claude Code, or similar tools, and experience leading AI adoption in an engineering team.
Experience mentoring senior engineers and team leads.
Clear written and verbal communication with executives, clients, and engineers.

Nice To Haves

People management experience.
Experience delivering generative AI solutions for clients, such as Amazon Bedrock, RAG, or agent frameworks.
SOC 2 or similar compliance experience in an engineering organization.
Platform engineering background, including Kubernetes, infrastructure as code (Terraform), and automation platforms such as Spacelift.
Experience with mobile or IoT delivery.
AWS Professional certification.

Responsibilities

Set technical direction across client engagements by reviewing architectures, solution designs, and key technical decisions.
Act as technical lead on the highest-risk engagements and contribute hands-on when needed.
Own the Spec-Driven Development playbook and AI-assisted development standards; demonstrate these practices, measure adoption, and improve them with teams.
Own engineering standards for code quality, testing, security, and architecture decision records.
Identify delivery and technical risks early across engagements and work with team leads to address them.
Lead the technical side of presales, including scoping, solution architecture, estimates, statements of work, and client workshops.
Serve as the senior technical escalation point for clients.
Mentor team leads and senior engineers and raise the organization's technical bar.
Define the technical hiring bar and conduct senior technical interviews.
Support engineering security and compliance work, including SOC 2 controls and evidence.