Staff Software Engineer

Who you are

• Are you excited by the challenge of building genuinely new infrastructure — where the problems aren't fully defined yet and the roadmap changes as fast as the field itself?
• Do you want to help figure out how AI agents discover, understand, and safely interact with real-world APIs?
• If so, we'd love to talk to you about joining Apollo's AI Systems team
• You have hands-on, production experience owning a search, ranking, relevance, or query-planning system at real scale — not just integrating a third-party search tool, but designing and iterating on the underlying logic
• You've tried multiple algorithmic approaches to a hard retrieval or ranking problem and can talk concretely about the tradeoffs
• You're genuinely energized by ambiguity — you'd rather define the right problem than execute a well-specified one, and you're comfortable when priorities shift quickly
• You communicate clearly and enjoy working in a small, fast-moving team with minimal process overhead
• You have a growth mindset and want to be at the center of how AI agents and enterprise infrastructure intersect
• Production experience with Rust — a strong plus, but not required
• Experience building agent orchestration, tool-calling frameworks, or agent evaluation/observability systems (LLM-as-judge, tracing, etc.)
• Experience with RAG systems where you owned retrieval quality, not just integration
• Background in distributed query engines, federated query planning, or database query optimization

What the job involves

• Design and build systems for API discovery, schema understanding, and safe agent-to-API orchestration at enterprise scale
• Own search, ranking, relevance, or query-planning problems central to how agents find and use the right APIs and data — this is core to the role, not a peripheral concern
• Prototype quickly, evaluate multiple algorithmic approaches, and iterate based on what you learn — priorities and direction can shift week to week as we learn from customer pilots
• Build and evaluate agentic systems: tool-calling frameworks, agent orchestration, and the observability/evaluation tooling needed to trust what agents are doing
• Collaborate closely with a small, high-context team where everyone influences architecture and direction — this is not a role with heavy process or deep management layers
• Engage with select enterprise customers piloting Constellation to understand real usage patterns and bring that insight back into the system design
• Communicate technical tradeoffs clearly to a small, technical leadership team and contribute to shaping the roadmap itself, not just executing against one

Benefits

• Globally distributed company: No return-to-office for us. We believe in the strengths that come with being a globally distributed company. Our 220+ Apollonauts located in 10 countries and 13 time zones thrive on working from home, learning from each other, and avoiding long commutes and traffic jams (although that hike to the kitchen for snacks between meetings can be a real journey).
• Flexible Time Off (FTO): Whether it’s planning a vacation or taking some time to focus on your well-being, one thing matters to us: you have time to focus on you. Rest up, and make sure you share those travel pics when you get back.

*For our UK and Canada teammates, we also offer "flexible time off in practice" which folds in your country-specific nuances so you may share the benefits of taking vacation that is restful, rejuvenating, and individualized for your needs.

• Full benefits package: We provide a variety of meaningful and competitive benefits based on whether you’re located in UK, Canada, or USA. When you go through the recruitment process, we’ll walk you through your country-specific package. No matter what life throws at you, rest assured that you and your family will be covered.
• Parental leave: Welcoming a new child is going to change your world, and we want to be here to support you when you need it. We offer leave for birthing and non-birthing parents, and a personal leave specialist to guide you through the process.
• Streamlined collaboration: Virtual “coffee chats”, tools that help us work as a distributed company, and a culture of documentation and global inclusivity ensure we stay connected and collaborate throughout the week.
• Company Kickoff: We believe in building meaningful connections with each and every Apollonaut. Once a year, we get the whole team together for our annual Company Kickoff where we learn, align, and most importantly, build relationships with each other. We can’t wait to see you at the next one!