Software Engineer – AI Product & Platform

The Role

As a Software Engineer for AI Product & Platform at Axolotis.ai, you’ll own the layer through which our customers experience our technology — the agentic AI workflows that ingest operational data and drive production optimization runs, and the web application in which engineers review, adjust, and approve the resulting schedules. Your main contribution will be to turn an agentic workflow that already runs in daily production into a robust, supervised product that a customer’s own engineers can operate with confidence. You’ll work directly with the founder and the optimization team, who own the mathematical engine, and you’ll be the person who makes that engine usable, observable, and trustworthy in the hands of customers.

What You’ll Do

Design, build, and harden the agentic workflows (built on Anthropic and OpenAI tooling) that parse operational inputs such as emails, text files, and web data, call the optimization engine, and return schedules for operator approval.

Implement the guardrails that make this safe in an operational setting — input and output validation, human-in-the-loop approval steps, audit logs, and graceful failure when data are missing or inconsistent.

Develop and extend the customer-facing web application — the full set of optimization objectives the engine supports, schedule comparison and visualization, and user and tenant management.

Build data onboarding adapters that bring each new customer’s data packages (Excel workbooks, time series, plant specifications) into a common format.

Write and maintain the APIs between the front end, the agentic layer, and the optimization engine.

Work directly with customer engineers during onboarding and early operation, and turn their feedback into product changes.

Contribute to testing, code review, and documentation as we scale.

What We’re Looking For

BS or MS in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related field (completed or completing). Recent graduates are encouraged to apply.

Strong Python skills, including building and consuming REST APIs.

Full-stack web development with a modern JavaScript or TypeScript framework (e.g., React) and a Python backend framework (e.g., FastAPI or Django) — through coursework, research, internships, or personal projects.

Hands-on experience building applications on large language model APIs (Anthropic, OpenAI, or similar), including tool calling, structured outputs, and prompt design — a substantial personal or academic project counts.

Working knowledge of relational databases (PostgreSQL in particular) and data modeling.

Comfort with messy, real-world data — you’ll build ingestion that fails loudly rather than silently.

Strong written and verbal communication — you’ll work closely with engineers at customer sites who are not software specialists.

Familiarity with modern software development practices (version control, testing, code review).

Nice to Have

Professional software development experience, including features shipped to production and maintained afterward; internships count.

Experience with agent frameworks and protocols such as the Claude Agent SDK, Claude Code skills, the Model Context Protocol (MCP), the OpenAI Agents SDK, or LangGraph.

Experience evaluating LLM systems — evaluation suites, regression tests for prompts and agents, tracing, and cost and latency monitoring.

Continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD).

Data visualization for engineering users (e.g., Plotly or D3), particularly for time series and schedules.

Enterprise authentication, particularly Microsoft Entra ID (Azure AD), and multitenant applications.

Cloud deployment, containers (Docker, DigitalOcean, or similar), and observability tooling.

Exposure to scientific Python (NumPy, pandas) and to optimization or simulation software as a consumer of its results.

Background in energy, power systems, utilities, or other industrial operations, or in software that supports operational decisions.

Prior experience at an early-stage startup, including direct work with customers.

Work Authorization

In compliance with federal law, all persons hired will be required to verify identity and eligibility to work in the United States and to complete the required employment eligibility verification form upon hire. As a seed-stage company we are not currently able to sponsor applicants for work visas.

Why Now

You’d be one of our earliest hires, with the scope and influence that comes with being here this early. Compensation is competitive cash plus meaningful early-stage equity. Our preference is hybrid out of Durham, NC, but remote is possible too for the right candidate.