Staff Engineer (Python) for AI voice technology that service restaurants

About the Product:
 

They build one of the most trusted AI order-taking systems for drive-thrus, designed specifically for high-volume QSR environments and built to scale. Their AI consistently delivers over 93% order completion and 96% accuracy, enabling faster, error-free service across thousands of locations.

Their platform gives brands full control over scripts, upsells, and voice, while allowing franchisees to easily adapt menus, limited-time offers, and regional variations. Built-in labor optimization reduces employee stress and turnover, saves hours of labor every day, and significantly improves the guest experience.

They are growing rapidly and operate the largest number of voice-AI drive-thru deployments in the market, competing directly with both big tech and restaurant technology leaders.

They are now looking for a Staff Engineer to join their Infrastructure team and help shape the backbone of a highly complex, real-time system at scale.

 

About the Role:
 

As a Staff Engineer, you will operate at a high level of ownership and impact, working on systems that are already live in production and used at massive scale.

You will:

• Own and evolve critical parts of the core backend infrastructure -a real-time, distributed system written in Python and Rust
• Lead large technical initiatives end-to-end with minimal guidance
• Troubleshoot and resolve high-severity, complex production issues
• Continuously improve development velocity while maintaining exceptionally high reliability standards

Why You Should Apply

This role is ideal for engineers who want real technical ownership, not just influence on paper.

By joining them, you will:

• Work on mission-critical, real-time systems deployed at massive scale
• Tackle hard infrastructure problems involving networking, performance, concurrency, and reliability
• Have genuine autonomy to design, build, and ship impactful solutions
• Compete technically with top-tier big tech systems while retaining startup-level speed
• Influence architecture decisions that directly affect thousands of real-world locations
• Be part of a team that values deep technical excellence, resilience, and ownership

If you’re looking for a role where your experience truly matters - and where the problems are genuinely difficult - this is it.

Qualifications

• BSc in Software Development or equivalent industry experience
• Previous experience as a Staff or Principal Engineer in a startup environment
• 10+ years of Python development experience
• Strong experience with Python Asyncio
• Excellent software design and architecture skills
• Strong written and verbal communication skills
• Significant experience with at least one strongly typed language (Rust, C++, Go, Swift, Java, etc.)
• Deep understanding of networking protocols and operating systems
• Deep expertise in Python profiling and performance optimization
• Proven experience delivering and troubleshooting production-grade, cloud-based distributed systems
• Experience building and debugging real-time, low-level systems (e.g., kernel, drivers, RTOS)
• Hands-on experience with Kubernetes and Helm
• Experience working with multiple observability stacks
• Strong LLM prompting skills, while also being effective without them
• Experience with gRPC and gRPC troubleshooting
• Contributor or maintainer of an open-source project

Bonus Experience

• Knowledge of WebRTC, STUN/TURN, SIP, RTP, HLS, or RTMP
• Experience with Rust and PyO3
• Audio or voice-related programming experience

Qualities They’re Looking For

• Fast - you aim to be a true 10x engineer, not just another senior profile
• Resilient - comfortable balancing planned work with urgent, real-time issues
• Clear communicator - able to write concise documentation and explain complex ideas
• Strong problem solver with a systems-level mindset
• Extreme ownership and independence
• Ability to turn incomplete or ambiguous requirements into real products
• A collaborative team player who raises the technical bar around them
  
  If you’re passionate about AI, real-time systems, and backend development at scale, we’d love to hear from you!