Staff Software Engineer, AI, Platform

Who We Are:

SmithRx is a rapidly growing, venture-backed Health-Tech company.  Our mission is to disrupt the expensive and inefficient Pharmacy Benefit Management (PBM) sector by building a next-generation drug acquisition platform driven by cutting edge technology, innovative cost saving tools, and best-in-class customer service.  With hundreds of thousands of members onboarded since 2016, SmithRx has a solution that is resonating with clients all across the country.

We pride ourselves for our mission-driven and collaborative culture that inspires our employees to do their best work. We believe that the U.S healthcare system is in need of transformation, and we come to work each day dedicated to making that change a reality. At our core, we are guided by our company values:

• Integrity: Our purpose guides our actions and gives us confidence in the path ahead. With unwavering honesty and dependability, we embrace the pressure of challenging the old and exemplify ethical leadership to create the new.
• Courage: We face continuous challenges with grit and resilience. We embrace the discomfort of the unknown by balancing autonomy with empathy, and ownership with vulnerability. We boldly challenge the status quo to keep moving forward—always.
• Together: The success of SmithRx reflects the strength of our partnerships and the commitment of our team. Our shared values bind us together and make us one. When one falls, we all fall; when one rises, we all rise.

Job Summary:

As a Staff Software Engineer, AI you will be a key architect in SmithRx’s mission to build a next-generation, AI-native pharmacy benefits platform. This is not a traditional MLE role; we are looking for a product-focused fungible engineer who can bridge the gap between cutting-edge LLM capabilities and reliable, production-grade software. You will design systems that leverage the power of AI while maintaining the deterministic rigor required for healthcare and financial transactions.  You will advocate for engineering best practices/methodologies, coding standards and large-scale system design perspectives to our team. We need our engineers to be versatile and driven, display leadership and ownership qualities, and be enthusiastic to take on new challenges as we continue to push technology forward.

What you will do:

• Focus on architecting system; discovering, designing, developing and maintaining SmithRx product features using a varied technology stack such as Golang, JavaScript/Typescript, Node, GraphQL, and SQL (amongst others), while leveraging full CI and CD to iterate quickly
• Collaborate with stakeholders and technical leads to translate requirements into high-quality, AI-native scalable software, while providing scope and risk assessments through comprehensive technical design documentation.
• Be the Stochastic/Deterministic Bridge: Build the "safety rails" around LLMs, creating deterministic software systems that effectively manage, validate, and wrap the stochastic nature of AI models to ensure 100% accuracy in healthcare data.
• Continually apply and enforce software development best practices, design patterns, testing, automation, tools and technologies by adoption of emerging AI technologies like Claude-code, Copilot or aikes. 
• Leverage AWS technologies, like Lambda, Managed Kafka, EKS  to handle various types of jobs and batch processing  
• Troubleshoot production issues by performing triages for issues that arise, assessing the impact, creating and executing a plan for short-term and long-term mitigation, and performing root cause analysis to prevent future occurrence of issues.
• Foster a collaborative learning culture by mentoring junior engineers in both traditional backend best practices and emerging AI-native development patterns, while driving technical excellence through code reviews and the exploration of innovative technologies.
• Work with senior leadership to turn technical vision into a tangible roadmap every quarter

What you will bring to SmithRx:

• BS or advanced degree in computer science or applicable experience
• 8+ years of software development experience working on server-side applications, specifically around API servers, third party integrations and data processing
• Expertise in a compiled language such as GoLang or Java is required
• Proficiency with relational databases such as PostgreSQL, including schema design, SQL tuning, and database monitoring is required
• Working knowledge of GraphQL APIs, CI and CD pipeline, AWS platform, Docker, and Kubernetes a plus
• Agentic Frameworks, MCP, LLM APIs (Anthropic/OpenAI), Prompt Engineering/Evals.
• Communication: A collaborative approach to engineering, capable of explaining technical trade-offs to stakeholders and mentoring a distributed team.
• Architectural Mindset: Ability to design for scale, performance, and maintainability while navigating the ambiguity of a high-growth startup.
• Positivity; non-dogmatic, team-first attitude
• Flexibility; someone who is responsive and comfortable with ambiguity
• Experience at a high-growth startup a plus

What SmithRx Offers You: 

• Highly competitive wellness benefits including Medical, Pharmacy, Dental, Vision, and Life Insurance and AD&D Insurance
• Flexible Spending Benefits 
• 401(k) Retirement Savings Program 
• Short-term and long-term disability
• Discretionary Paid Time Off 
• Paid Company Holidays
• Wellness Benefits
• Commuter Benefits 
• Paid Parental Leave benefits
• Employee Assistance Program (EAP)
• Well-stocked kitchen in office locations
• Professional development and training opportunities

Location: US - Remote