Senior Software Engineer, AI Team (Oakland, CA)

Senior Software Engineer, AI Team

Location: Oakland, CA – Onsite (HQ)
Department: Technology – Artificial Intelligence
Reports to: Director of Engineering, AI
Employment Type: Full-time
Classification: Exempt

 

About the Role

Fictiv is building the next generation of intelligent manufacturing platforms. Our AI Team operates as an independent innovation group focused on creating entirely new product capabilities for both Fictiv and Misumi.

Rather than maintaining legacy systems or shipping incremental features, this team explores 0→1 product concepts, rapidly prototypes them with real users, and evolves them into production-ready opportunities in partnership with the broader engineering organization.

This role is ideal for engineers who thrive in discovery-driven environments. You’ll work at the intersection of AI, manufacturing, and real-world data, identifying opportunities where intelligent automation can meaningfully improve how digital manufacturing operates.

You should bring an inventor’s mindset, startup-level ownership, and strong technical rigor, continuously testing and refining ideas before scaling them.

Your work will help define how AI transforms digital manufacturing using the proprietary datasets and operational insights of Fictiv and Misumi.

This position is based in our Oakland, CA headquarters and requires regular onsite collaboration with the AI team.

 

What You’ll Do

• Identify high-impact AI opportunities that create strategic advantage for Fictiv and Misumi.
• Rapidly prototype AI-driven applications using real company data to test new ideas and hypotheses.
• Design and iterate on LLM-powered systems to validate product-market fit, technical feasibility, and business impact.
• Partner with customers and internal teams to evaluate real-world feasibility and value.
• Leverage proprietary manufacturing and supply chain datasets to build differentiated capabilities.
• Work with engineering and product teams to transition validated prototypes into scalable production systems.
• Evaluate emerging AI technologies, models, and tooling for applicability to complex workflows.
• Document system architecture, experiments, and learnings to support productionization.
• Contribute to shaping the long-term AI strategy across both organizations.

Basic Qualifications

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• Strong AI-assisted coding skills with modern backend or full-stack development.
• Experience building and deploying LLM-powered applications used by real users in production.
• Proficiency with modern development stacks (TypeScript/JavaScript and AWS preferred).
• Deep understanding of:
• Prompt engineering
• LLM evaluation frameworks
• Reliability and guardrail patterns
• LLM system architecture
• Experience designing experiments and validating technical hypotheses using data.
• Must be legally authorized to work in the United States without the need for visa sponsorship now or in the future.

Preferred Experience

• Experience building AI-powered products in production environments.
• Strong ability to work across multiple languages, frameworks, and technical domains.
• Experience working with complex, messy, real-world datasets.
• Background in applied AI or machine learning systems.

What Makes You Successful in This Role

• Strong product intuition and business-oriented thinking.
• A desire to solve meaningful problems, not just build technology.
• Comfort working in ambiguous, fast-moving environments with minimal process.
• Ability to independently evaluate ideas and challenge assumptions.
• Clear and structured communication skills.
• A mindset oriented toward discovery, experimentation, and rapid learning.

Additional Information

• Work Location: Oakland, CA – Onsite at company headquarters
• Travel: 0–10% (primarily for team meetings or conferences)