Staff Software Engineer, AI/ML

Job Description

ABOUT THE ROLE

We are seeking a Staff Software Engineer to serve as the technical anchor of our internal innovation team. This role combines deep technical expertise with leadership across architecture, product thinking, and stakeholder engagement.

Youll guide a cross-disciplinary team, mentor engineers across levels, and partner closely with Engineering Leadership and business stakeholders to turn high-level opportunities into working platforms. The role is hands-on but also highly influential: youll ensure technical excellence while balancing speed with rigorshipping solutions quickly while laying down patterns that can scale if adopted long-term.

Youll also help define how projects are structured, built, and transitioned for production support, ensuring solutions deliver both immediate impact and lasting value.

What You'll Do

As a Staff Software Engineer on our team, you will:

• Catalyst for Innovation Lead the design and development of platforms that solve high-impact problems where no off-the-shelf solution exists.
• Architect & Builder Translate ambiguous business needs into clear technical direction, delivering production-grade systems from prototype to platform.
• Scale with Confidence Design systems that can evolve rapidly while maintaining reliability, scalability, and long-term maintainability.
• Mentor & Elevate Guide engineers across levels, setting standards for engineering excellence and fostering a culture of technical depth.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration Partner with product, design, AI/ML, and business stakeholders to define scope, clarify tradeoffs, and ensure success.
• From Zero to Platform Rapid prototyping and driving projects from concept to delivery, ensuring ongoing ownership of the platforms.
• Operational Excellence Embed best practices in CI/CD, observability, and security from the start, ensuring production-readiness and support.

Qualifications

WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience, with 23 years at Staff/Principal level or equivalent.
• Deep expertise in distributed systems, APIs, or full-stack platform development.
• Hands-on experience with cloud-native environments (containers, serverless, CI/CD pipelines).
• Familiarity with AI/ML systems (LLMs, RAG, applied ML).
• Ability to lead technical direction while remaining hands-on.
• Strong communicator, able to explain tradeoffs to executives and mentor engineers.
• Comfortable working in ambiguous, high-autonomy environments.
• Track record of delivering complex solutions that align technical strategy with business needs.

BONUS POINTS FOR

• Experience with other large entertainment focused platforms, centered around being consumer-facing at a large scale
• Familiarity and hands-on exposure with MCP Servers and highly accessible and available API platforms
• Knowledge of microservices and event-driven architectures at enterprise scale
• Cloud-native, global scaling experience (AWS and their various tool offerings)
• Understanding of the mindset of Fail Fast, Learn Fast and continuous improvement

Fully Remote: This role has been designated as fully remote, meaning it is expected to be performed from a non-Versant worksite, typically an employees residence. Occasional travel is required and can range from within the country (typical, various times of the year) to global (not typical but still possible).

Additional Information

As part of our selection process, external candidates may be required to attend an in-person interview with an NBCUniversal employee at one of our locations prior to a hiring decision. NBCUniversal's policy is to provide equal employment opportunities to all applicants and employees without regard to race, color, religion, creed, gender, gender identity or expression, age, national origin or ancestry, citizenship, disability, sexual orientation, marital status, pregnancy, veteran status, membership in the uniformed services, genetic information, or any other basis protected by applicable law.

If you are a qualified individual with a disability or a disabled veteran and require support throughout the application and/or recruitment process as a result of your disability, you have the right to request a reasonable accommodation. You can submit your request to AccessibilityS.

Although you'll be hired as an NBCU employee, your employment and the responsibilities associated with this job likely will transition to Versant in the future. By joining at this pivotal time, you'll be a part of this exciting company as it takes shape.