Staff Software Engineer
About CircleCI Engineering
CI/CD has been solved. Now it's being reinvented. AI agents don't just run pipelines. They write code, trigger builds, interpret failures, and propose fixes. The interfaces that developers use to understand and trust that work don't exist yet. We're building them.
At CircleCI, our guiding principles aren't posters on a wall. We learn fast: we run experiments, accept failure, and scale what works. We think like the customer: every decision connects back to the developer sitting in front of a failing build at 2 am. We own the outcome: not just our slice of it, but the whole thing. If that's how you already work, you'll fit here.
Team-Agnostic Placement
We don't hire for a team. We hire for CircleCI. Where you land depends on where your strengths create the most leverage, and we figure that out together. You might own the CI pipeline experience, deploy and release tooling, notification infrastructure, monetization flows, AI agent surfaces, or the foundational web platform. The through line across all of it is the same: full-stack ownership, a high bar for craft, and work that directly shapes how tens of thousands of developers experience CircleCI every day.
What You'll Do
- Build AI-natively. AI is how we work. It's not a productivity layer on top of engineering, but the default starting point for how problems get approached and solved.
- Own technical strategy for your domain. You decide when and how the architecture evolves, balancing technical debt against velocity. When a project spans teams, you're the one who breaks down the ambiguity and takes ownership of whether it lands.
- Invent new interfaces. Software delivery is being reinvented. Pipelines run autonomously, generate fixes, and surface results that need human judgment. The tools developers use to understand, trust, and act on that work don't exist yet. You'll define what they look like and establish the patterns the team builds on.
- Own the full stack, at scale. Build features end-to-end in Go, React, and TypeScript. Your ownership extends past your own code to the systems and teams around it.
- Connect engineering to the business. Partner directly with Product and Engineering Management to translate business goals into technical strategy. You understand the "why" behind the roadmap and use it to make tradeoffs.
- Champion observability. Drive monitoring and alerting strategy across your domain, not just your own services. Use Honeycomb, Datadog, and Rollbar to reduce noise and improve the org's ability to diagnose problems quickly.
- Mentor at scale. Mentor multiple engineers at once. Build the systems and documentation that transfer knowledge and remove single points of failure, not just your own.
What You'll Bring
- AI-native engineering practices. You use AI tools daily and can speak to what you've built, where they changed your approach, and where they fall short.
- A track record of shipping at scale. You've built and owned systems that other engineers build on. 8+ years of production full-stack experience, with a history of taking accountability for outcomes.
- Full-stack depth. Strong across the stack — React and TypeScript on the frontend, Go on the backend, owning API design, data modeling, and service integration.
- System design, across domains. You own architecture decisions that span multiple systems and teams. You make the tradeoff calls, document the reasoning, and are the person others escalate to when the answer isn't obvious.
- Business acumen. You understand how your domain connects to the broader business, and you use that context to guide technical decisions, not just implement them.
- Technical leadership. You mentor engineers, give direct feedback on technical direction, and raise the quality bar across teams through how you engage in reviews and design discussions, not just what you ship.
Sound like you?
You've stopped waiting for AI to mature and are already building with it, not as a productivity trick, but as a core part of how you think about problems. You care about the product as much as the code. You're drawn to work where the patterns don't exist yet and the best answer requires you to invent it. If that's how you already operate, we want to talk.
The salary range listed reflects the wide geographic scope of this posting, as we hire across the United States and Canada. Actual compensation is determined based on a combination of factors, including but not limited to skills, experience, job-related knowledge, and geographic location. As a result, the starting salary offered may vary and could fall anywhere within the posted range, and not all candidates should expect to receive an offer at the top of the range.
Expected salary range for San Francisco and the surrounding area.
Expected salary range for specific metro areas including Boston, Washington DC, Denver, Los Angeles, New York, Portland, San Diego, and Seattle. These metro areas may change periodically.
Expected pay range for all other US locations not falling into Metro Zone 3 or Metro Zone 2.
We will ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and to receive other benefits and privileges of employment. Please contact us to request accommodation.
About CircleCI
CircleCI is the world’s largest continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) platform, and the hub where code moves from idea to delivery. As one of the most-used DevOps tools - processing more than 3 million jobs a day - CircleCI has unique access to data on how the most effective engineering teams work, and the tools to help software companies successfully leverage the power of AI into their commercial applications. Companies like Hinge, HuggingFace, and Samsung use us to improve engineering team productivity, release better products, and get to market faster.
Founded in 2011 and headquartered in downtown San Francisco with a global, remote workforce, CircleCI is venture-backed by Base10, Greenspring Associates, Eleven Prime, IVP, Sapphire Ventures, Top Tier Capital Partners, Baseline Ventures, Threshold
Ventures, Scale Venture Partners, Owl Rock Capital, Next Equity Partners, Heavybit, and Harrison Metal Capital.
CircleCI is an Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action employer. We do not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, transgender status, sexual stereotypes, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, or other applicable legally protected characteristics. We also consider qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law.
How CircleCI Uses AI in Hiring
At CircleCI, people make our hiring decisions. We use technology to support our recruiting team so they can spend more time on what matters most: getting to know you.
Where we may use AI
- Job descriptions and messaging: AI may help draft job descriptions and role-specific messaging so they are clear and accurate.
- Application review: For some roles, we use an AI tool to review applications, including resumes and application responses, against criteria our hiring team sets for the role. The tool generates a fit score and summary to help recruiters organize and prioritize applications.
- Interview notes: With advance notice, an AI note-taking tool may join interviews to record, transcribe, and summarize the conversation. This lets interviewers focus on talking with you. You will be told before each interview, and you may opt out at any stage by letting your recruiter know. If you opt out, the tool will not join, and your candidacy is not affected.
- Outreach: AI may help draft candidate outreach and scheduling messages, which our team reviews before sending.
Our commitment
AI does not make hiring decisions at CircleCI. Our recruiters and hiring teams review candidates and make every decision to advance or reject an application. No candidate is rejected based solely on an AI score. We have tools and processes in place to test for bias and to review how these tools perform, and we adjust our approach as AI technology and the laws that govern it change.
Your choices
You can ask for human-only review of your application, opt out of AI interview note-taking, request an accommodation, or ask questions about how we use AI. Contact recruiting@circleci.com. For how we handle your data, including retention, see our Privacy Policy.
You will be redirected to the company website to complete your application.
