Staff Software Engineer
Arc
Industry
Information Technology & Services
Location
United States
Work mode
Remote
Job type
Full-time
Annual salary
Not specified
Minimum experience
8+ years
Posted
16th July, 2026
Required skills
Artificial IntelligenceObservabilityPythonLarge Language Models
About the role
About the Role
At Arc, we are on a mission to amplify employees at local businesses using AI. With years of experience building and scaling commerce tools for businesses-from farmers markets and neighborhood coffee shops to global retailers, restaurant chains, and major sports venues-we know how to deliver mission-critical technology that integrates easily, delights customers, and works every time.
Voice drive-thru is our first product on that journey: an AI voice agent that takes real orders at the drive-thru speaker, in real time, integrating directly with a business's existing POS and hardware. Done well, this means more revenue, faster lines, and fewer mistakes for the operators we serve.
As a Staff Software Engineer, you'll take ownership of the hardest technical problems across our stack including backend and AI systems: designing for reliability, speed and accuracy under live drive-thru traffic.
This is a high-leverage, high-autonomy role for someone who wants to shape the technical direction of a fast-moving product, not just execute tickets.
What You'll Do
- Design and evolve the core architecture of our conversational AI and voice-ordering systems, balancing latency, reliability, and correctness in a live, in-lane drive-thru environment
- Lead complex, cross-cutting technical initiatives - from POS and hardware integrations to evaluation and observability of AI agent behavior - that span multiple systems and teams
- Set technical direction and standards for the backend, and mentor and onboard new hires.
- Partner closely with product and operations to translate the real-world, on-the-ground needs of local business operators into robust technical solutions
- Improve how we test, evaluate, and monitor AI agent quality, given the unique challenges of validating non-deterministic, conversational systems
- Debug and resolve the gnarliest production issues, especially ones spanning real-time audio, third-party integrations, and distributed services
What We're Looking For
- 8+ years of professional software engineering experience, with a track record of owning significant systems end-to-end
- Deep experience with backend systems in Python (or similarly strong general backend fundamentals with a willingness to go deep in Python)
- Experience designing for reliability and correctness in real-time or latency-sensitive systems
- Comfort operating with ambiguity - you can take a loosely defined problem and drive it to a well-architected solution
- Strong judgment about when to build for scale vs. when to move fast - and the communication skills to bring others along with your reasoning
- Bonus: experience with conversational AI/LLM-based systems, real-time audio/telephony platforms, or integrating with third-party/legacy POS or specialized hardware
Why Join Us
You'll have significant influence over both the product and the engineering culture at an early-stage company solving a genuinely hard, high-stakes problem: real-time AI that talks to real customers, in service of a mission to help local businesses run better. Voice drive-thru is just the beginning - your decisions will help shape what comes next.
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