• 2+ years of software engineering experience, strong in Python and/or TypeScript.
• Hands-on experience building and deploying real applications (FastAPI, Node, React/Next.js, or equivalent).
• Deep experience with LLM APIs (Anthropic, OpenAI): prompt engineering, function calling, structured outputs.
• Experience building multi-step AI workflows or agent systems that run unattended and have to be right.
• RAG architectures, vector databases (pgvector, Pinecone, Weaviate), and document processing pipelines, with the ability to implement them rather than just describe them.
• Comfort with SQL/PostgreSQL and API integrations (REST, webhooks).
• Production deployment and operations (Docker, AWS/GCP/Vercel).
• Fluency with AI-assisted development tools (Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot).
• Strong bias toward shipping: one check working end-to-end this week over a complete taxonomy next quarter.
• A real research instinct. You enjoy going from “I know nothing about this area” to “here is how it works, here are my sources, here is what I’m still unsure about.”
• Comfort reading dense primary material and turning it into structured rules and edge cases.
• You think in inputs. Given an obligation, you can reason backwards to the exact data required to evaluate it, and spot when that data does not exist yet.
• A completionist streak on edge cases. You are the person who asks what happens at the threshold, in the exempt category, and when the record is blank.
• Ability to work without a spec, define the problem yourself, and bring back a proposal rather than a question.
• Intellectual honesty about ambiguity: you flag and escalate rather than guess and ship.
• Clear writing, and the ability to hold a productive working relationship with lawyers.