Staff Full Stack AI Engineer

At Sonder, we believe that every person deserves to feel safe, supported, and empowered to be at their best - wherever they are. That's why we're redefining workplace health, safety, and wellbeing through a seamless blend of technology and human expertise. Sonder's mobile platform provides 24/7, real-time support from a dedicated team of safety, medical, and mental health professionals - ensuring that our members receive immediate care when they need it most. In critical situations, we go beyond digital support, offering on-the-ground assistance to manage time-sensitive incidents.

By harnessing real-time insights, we enable organisations to take proactive steps toward a healthier, safer future, which leads directly to tangible bottom-line business outcomes.

An Exciting Time to Join Sonder
Since our founding in 2017, Sonder has experienced rapid growth, expanding operations across Australia, New Zealand, and the UK. Backed by Australia's leading venture capital firms, Seek and Blackbird, we are well-capitalised and on a mission to scale globally, partnering with corporations, educational institutions, and government agencies to transform workplace wellbeing at scale. Our impact and scale: 1,000,000+ members across multiple countries 200+ team members, plus an extensive network of on-the-ground responders If you're passionate about using technology and human expertise to drive meaningful change, join us in shaping the future of workplace wellbeing

About The Role
As our Staff Full Stack AI Software Engineer, you'll play a critical role in setting the technical direction of Sonder's platform. Beyond building features, you'll influence architectural decisions, drive adoption of AI across the product suite, and mentor engineers to raise the overall technical bar. You'll be expected to operate with autonomy, tackle ambiguous problems, and design solutions that scale across millions of users.

You'll work across the stack, from elegant front-end experiences to distributed back-end systems, embedding AI capabilities that make our support more intelligent, proactive, and personalised. As a Staff Engineer, you'll also act as a technical thought partner to product and leadership teams, ensuring Sonder's technology strategy aligns with our global mission.

What You'll Bring To The Team
We're looking for a leader who is as excited about mentoring engineers and shaping strategy as they are about hands-on coding. Your experience and mindset will be critical to our success, particularly in the rapidly evolving LLM space.

Your Core Expertise

• Staff-level experience: You have a proven track record of operating as a Staff Engineer or in a similar leadership position, driving high-impact technical initiatives across multiple teams and products.
• Full-Stack Mastery: You are a full-stack expert with significant experience in at least one modern front-end framework (React, Angular, or Vue) and a strong back-end language , Python, or Java). You're comfortable building elegant, scalable solutions from end to end.
• Applied LLM Engineering: You have hands-on, production-level experience building and deploying applications that leverage Large Language Models (LLMs). This includes proficiency with Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems and a solid understanding of how to manage and connect context.
• LLM Frameworks and Protocols: You are proficient with frameworks like LangChain, and are familiar with similar technologies such as LlamaIndex, Haystack, or Semantic Kernel. You have a strong understanding of emerging standards like the Model Context Protocol (MCP) and have practical experience implementing it or similar agentic architectures to connect LLMs to external tools and data sources.
• Advanced System Design: You have deep expertise in designing and architecting complex, distributed systems. You understand the unique challenges of integrating LLMs into a production environment, and know how to optimize for performance, reliability, and security at a massive scale.
• Cloud & DevOps: You have a solid understanding of a major cloud platform (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and are a champion of modern DevOps practices, including CI/CD, containerization, and infrastructure-as-code.

Your Leadership & Mindset

• Mentorship & Influence: You are a natural mentor who elevates those around you. You have a history of coaching engineers, providing high-quality design and code reviews, and setting a high technical bar for the entire team.
• Strategic Problem-Solver: You are comfortable tackling ambiguous problems and translating them into clear, actionable technical plans. You're driven by the opportunity to solve complex challenges that impact millions of lives.
• Alignment & Communication: You excel at partnering with cross-functional teams, from product managers to data scientists, to define technical strategies that align directly with business and product goals.
• Work Location and Working Rights: You have full working rights in Australia, and are comfortable working 2-3 days out of our Waterloo office.

Why Join Sonder?

• Hybrid and flexible working – strike the right balance for your life and productivity
• Free Sonder app access for you and your family – 24/7 health, safety and wellbeing support
• $1,000 annual development budget + 2 days study leave
• Paid parental leave – 12 weeks for primary carers and 4 weeks for secondary carers, with a supportive return-to-work program
• Employee Share Option Plan (ESOP) – share in Sonder's success
• Wellbeing fund – $250 per year to spend your way
• Novated leasing and salary packaging options
• Weekly team perks – free coffee Tuesdays, catered lunch Thursdays, and a dog-friendly office
• Volunteer leave – 2 days per year to support causes that matter to you
• Regular social events and team bonding opportunities

Sonder is for Everyone
We're committed to building a diverse and inclusive workplace. We encourage applications from people of all backgrounds, experiences, abilities and identities. If you need any support with your application or the recruitment process, please reach out – we'd love to hear from you.
Due to the nature of our industry, all Sonder employees are required to complete a National Police Check and Working With Children Check.