Staff Software Engineer, RLE

Handshake•San Francisco, CA

19h•Onsite

About The Position

We’re hiring a Staff Software Engineer to lead the architecture and evolution of our Reinforcement Learning Environments (RLE) platform—the systems that define how frontier AI models learn real-world work. This is a high-impact, technical leadership role responsible for system design, cross-team alignment, and setting the long-term technical direction of RLE.

Requirements

8+ years of experience in distributed systems, backend infrastructure, or ML platforms
Deep expertise in system design, data modeling, and scalable architectures
Strong proficiency with TypeScript, backend systems, and modern web stacks
Proven experience operating high-scale production systems in cloud environments
Track record of technical leadership and cross-functional influence

Nice To Haves

Experience with RL infrastructure, simulation systems, or evaluation frameworks
Background supporting applied AI/ML research teams
Experience building platform-level abstractions used across multiple teams

Responsibilities

Define and drive architecture for scalable, extensible RLE systems and data pipelines
Lead development of platform capabilities enabling rapid domain creation
Partner with Research, Product, and Ops to shape strategy and execution
Set standards for reliability, observability, performance, and data quality
Mentor engineers and elevate engineering excellence across the team
Identify and solve systemic bottlenecks in scaling environments and data generation