AI Staff Engineer

We built Factory Agent in 2023 — the world’s first AI that reads, understands, and documents industrial control code. Now we need engineers obsessed with pushing AI into the physical world. This isn’t another chatbot job.

SDA sits at the intersection of AI and the physical world. We work with Henkel, Cytiva, Pepsi, SEW-EURODRIVE and other global leaders to bring AI-powered intelligence to the factory floor. We’re opening our Boston hub to build a team of relentless engineers defining the next chapter of Physical AI.

Responsibilities

Own the AI stack. Ship to production. Lead the team.

• Build LLM-Powered Industrial AI — Design and ship AI microservices on Anthropic Claude / AWS Bedrock with real agent orchestration, tool use, and RAG at enterprise scale.
• Architect the AI Platform — Set technical direction on prompt engineering, agent design, evaluation frameworks, and model integration.
• Ship the Frontend Experience — Own the React + TypeScript interface thousands of industrial engineers rely on daily.
• Lead & Grow the Boston Team — Mentor engineers, run code reviews, build the culture. You’re the technical anchor for a fast-scaling team.
• Go Deep with Customers — Present to plant managers and CTOs at the world’s largest manufacturers.
• Push the Boundaries — Expand capabilities, prototype what’s next for Physical AI.

Physical AI, Not Chatbots — your code controls assembly lines, filling machines, robotic arms.

Ground Floor in Boston — you’re not joining a team — you’re building one.

Global Enterprise Scale —Customers and Factories on every continent.

Equity in a Rocketship —We’re backed by top-tier VCs who don’t fund small ideas.

Built for Builders — flat hierarchy, fast decisions, flexible hours.

Basic Qualifications

5+ years shipping software — Python, React, TypeScript. You write code daily and it shows.

Hands-on LLM experience — tool use, function calling, RAG, prompt engineering, agent orchestration.

Experience with Anthropic Claude models or AWS Bedrock

Experience with AI agent frameworks — Griptape, LangChain, or similar orchestration libraries.

AWS-native — Lambda, DynamoDB, SQS, EventBridge, API Gateway.

Leadership DNA — you’ve led small teams and know how to elevate everyone around you.

Startup velocity — you thrive in ambiguity, ship fast, learn faster.

Communication — explain transformers to a plant manager and factory automation to an investor.

Preferred Qualifications

MCP (Model Context Protocol) or emerging AI integration standards

Industrial background — Siemens, Rockwell, Beckhoff, CodeSys or IIoT/MES

GraphQL fluency — consuming and designing APIs

German language skills (our roots are in Germany)

E2E testing with Playwright

About Us

Software Defined Automation is an industrial deep-tech software company that enables Manufacturing-as-Code through the creation of completely new degrees of freedom for the automated configuration, operation, maintenance, and continuous change of production plants. We have set ourselves a great mission, targeting the resource efficiency of one-third of the global value creation and energy consumption. Software Defined Automation is the enabler for AI-based self-optimizing production, thereby reaching the next technological innovation step function in productivity for the world.

For this new world of Software Defined Automation, we build a team that masters both Cloud as well as real-time shop floor operations technology. Join our team with your high energy-driven nature, interest in industrial manufacturing, and motivation to push the boundaries from the cloud all the way to all moving things on the shop floor!