- You will play a critical role in modernizing our platform through cloud-native architecture, shared engineering platforms, and production AI systems that improve both customer outcomes and engineering velocity.
- What You'll Do:
Drive Cross-Organization Technical Strategy
Lead technical initiatives that span multiple teams, products, and domains. Define architectural direction, align engineering organizations around common approaches, and guide long-term technical investments that improve organizational scalability, reliability, and developer productivity.
Navigate ambiguity, resolve competing priorities, and build consensus across engineering, product, and business stakeholders.
Build with AI
Design and evolve the AI development practices and help drive the creation of AI powered products for our
AI is not just transforming how we build, it changes what we build. We are looking for a Staff Engineer who can help mentor teams on both.
Architect Complex Distributed Systems
Define architecture for large-scale, distributed systems spanning multiple services, domains, and business capabilities.
Drive architectural consistency around
APIs
event-driven systems
cloud infrastructure
reliability
security
observability
operational excellence
Simplify complex systems through thoughtful abstractions and reusable patterns.
Raise the Engineering Bar
Establish engineering standards that improve software quality across the organization.
Lead architectural reviews, influence design decisions, and help engineering teams make pragmatic tradeoffs between speed, simplicity, scalability, reliability, and cost.
Champion modern engineering practices including AI-assisted software development, automated testing, observability, continuous delivery, and platform engineering.
Mentor Technical Leaders
Multiply the effectiveness of senior engineers and technical leads through coaching, architectural guidance, and design mentorship.
Help engineers grow their system thinking, technical judgment, and decision-making while creating an engineering culture centered on curiosity, ownership, and continuous improvement.
Drive Operational Excellence
Lead initiatives that improve organizational reliability, resiliency, security, and operational maturity.
Define engineering patterns for
observability
production diagnostics
AI evaluation
latency budgets
cost optimization
incident response
resiliency
governance
Establish measurable engineering standards that improve the health of production systems over time.
Collaborate Across the Organization
Partner closely with engineering leadership, product management, solution architecture, security, platform engineering, infrastructure, and AI practitioners to translate business strategy into scalable technical solutions.
Influence decisions through technical expertise, data, and strong communication rather than organizational authority.
What You'll Bring
8+ years of experience designing and building production software systems, including significant experience leading large-scale technical initiatives
Demonstrated experience driving architecture across multiple teams, services, or business domains
Deep experience building cloud-native distributed systems using modern software engineering practices
Experience designing and operating production AI systems, including LLM-powered applications and agentic workflows
Strong experience creating reusable engineering platforms, frameworks, libraries, or shared infrastructure adopted across multiple teams
Expertise designing APIs, event-driven architectures, and highly available distributed systems
Experience establishing engineering standards, architectural patterns, and operational best practices across organizations
Demonstrated experience leading technical direction through influence rather than direct management
Deep understanding of AI operational concerns including evaluation strategies, model selection, latency optimization, cost management, observability, governance, and safety
Experience designing AI development workflows that improve engineering productivity through responsible use of AI-assisted development tools such as Cursor, Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, or similar
Strong understanding of software architecture, cloud infrastructure, reliability engineering, and platform design
Excellent communication skills with the ability to explain complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences
Proven ability to mentor senior engineers and elevate engineering organizations through coaching and technical leadership
Strong systems thinking with an outcome-oriented mindset focused on creating durable organizational leverage
Ideally, You'll Also Have Experience With
Enterprise AI platforms (OpenAI, Azure OpenAI, Anthropic, Databricks)
C# (.NET), Python, TypeScript, Go, Java, or similar languages
Kubernetes, Docker, and modern platform engineering practices
Infrastructure as Code using Terraform, CDK, or similar tooling
Observability platforms including OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, or similar
Large-scale platform modernization or cloud migration initiatives
Highly regulated industries such as Financial Services, Insurance, Healthcare, or similar
- #ST2
- Note that the following statements only apply to candidates who will be working from an unincorporated area within Los Angeles County. **
First American will consider for employment all qualified applicants, including those with arrest or conviction records, in a manner consistent with the requirements of applicable state and local laws (e.g., the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers and the California Fair Chance Act). First American intends to conduct a review of an applicant’s criminal history in connection with a conditional offer. First American reasonably believes that a criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship with the following material job duties for this position potentially resulting in the withdrawal of the conditional offer of employment: handling of confidential, proprietary or trade secret information belonging to First American or its customers, administrating or facilitating financial transactions, and the ability to meet customer-imposed criminal history requirements.
What We Offer
By choice, we don’t simply accept individuality – we embrace it, we support it, and we thrive on it! Our People First culture is inclusive for all employees - not just because it's the right thing to do, but because it's the key to our success. We are proud to foster an authentic and inclusive workplace For All. You are free and encouraged to bring your entire, unique self to work. First American is an equal opportunity employer in every sense of the term.
Based on eligibility, First American offers a comprehensive benefits package including medical, dental, vision, 401k, PTO/paid sick leave and other great benefits like an employee stock purchase plan.
Pay Range: $148,600.00 - $198,200.00 Annually
This hiring range is a reasonable estimate of the base pay range for this position at the time of posting. Pay is based on a number of factors which may include job-related knowledge, skills, experience, business requirements and geographic location.
