Raft Staff Engineer at Raft leading technical direction and architecture for the [R]AIMS AI Mission System platform. Responsible for hands-on coding, architectural decisions, and leading major engineering efforts.
Responsibilities
As the Staff Engineer for [R]AIMS, you will serve as a senior technical leader responsible for evolving the architecture, execution, and engineering rigor of Raft’s AI Mission System. You will be hands-on in the codebase, leading by doing, while also setting technical direction and raising the quality of engineering across the team.
This role requires someone equally comfortable writing production systems with complex multi-vendor integrations, debugging difficult distributed systems issues, leading design reviews, and making pragmatic tradeoff decisions under ambiguity.
Drive architectural decisions across the [R]AIMS platform, evaluating tradeoffs across performance, scalability, security, and maintainability and building alignment across engineering and product stakeholders
Lead major technical epics from conception through delivery, decomposing ambiguous problems into executable plans and keeping cross-functional teams moving with clarity and momentum
Simplify and rationalize distributed system architecture as the platform scales, reducing incidental complexity and improving operational reliability without sacrificing capability
Optimize platform performance across both edge and cloud deployment targets, identifying and resolving bottlenecks in data-intensive, latency-sensitive operational environments
Establish strong engineering foundations and reusable technical patterns that improve developer productivity and code quality across the team
Mentor engineers at multiple levels, conducting design reviews, providing substantive code feedback, and actively elevating technical execution across the platform
Partner with AI/ML engineers on model integration, inference optimization, and the operational deployment of agentic workflows within [R]AIMS
Engage directly with customers and program stakeholders at operationally demanding environments across the Department of Defense, representing Raft’s technical capabilities with credibility and clarity
What we are looking for:
6+ years of hands-on experience building and shipping production software systems across the full stack (frontend, backend, infrastructure, and ML)
