Senior Staff Engineer & AI Innovation Lead (Elixir, Ruby, Flutter)

What Success Looks Like

One year in, this person will have absorbed our last Staff Engineer's departure without a drop in client delivery, replaced ad hoc AI tool usage with a documented AI skill enhancement strategy that's measurably adopted across every project team, and become the person Staff Engineers and developers point to when asked who owns SmartLogic's technical standards and direction.

Description

SmartLogic is hiring a Senior Staff Engineer & AI Innovation Lead.  This role serves as a senior technical leader who owns the health and direction of SmartLogic’s engineering organization while remaining hands-on as a Staff Engineer (SE) on client project work. This is a new, blended role: part of your time is spent setting technical standards, driving AI-enabled development practices, and coaching our engineering team; the rest is spent in the project leadership seat with clients and code.

SmartLogic is a custom software development agency, with client work organized by project. Each project is staffed with a Project Manager, an SE, Designers, and Developers. As the project’s SE, you'll own planning and implementation of technical delivery, maintain product documentation, maintain the project backlog, and technical direction, and co-lead in partnership with your Project Manager.

As AI Innovation Lead & Technical Leader, you'll operate at the organization-wide level.  This role will: set the technical standards other SEs are expected to follow, own how we adopt AI tooling across SmartLogic, and provide technical guidance to staff. Note: this is not a direct-manager role, the COO remains responsible for supervision and for resourcing and staffing decisions and you will not have direct reports for HR/supervision purposes, but you will be the credible technical voice.

This position is fully remote within the United States and its Territories. In this role, you will report to the COO. Even if you don’t think you meet 100% of the requirements, but you think this is an interesting role that you can succeed in, please still apply.

About SmartLogic

SmartLogic is an experienced and growing custom software development consultancy successfully serving clients since 2005. We are deeply committed to our team, our clients, and the communities where we work. Some of our recent company initiatives include leading on youth workforce development, mentoring undergraduates, partner in UMD Launch Fund Nexus program with startups and graduate students, software developer apprenticeships, our Elixir Wizards podcast, and the Baltimore Women in Tech micro-grants program. SmartLogic values both continuous growth and giving back to the community, so there may be opportunities to engage at the professional level through conferences and our podcast.

First 100 Days

Days 1 to 30
- Fully onboard onto the active client projects coming off our departing Staff Engineer, with zero missed commitments during the handoff.
- Independently own technical direction, PRD/backlog, and code review cadence on at least two of those projects by day 30.

Days 31 to 60
- Start structured, recurring technical 1:1s with engineering team members, distinct from day-to-day project mentorship.
- Begin to map current AI tool usage, standards gaps, and delivery pain points.
- Lead technical operations meetings and owns decisions made regarding technical standards, skill gaps, and tooling choices. 

Days 61 to 90
- Draft a first-pass AI skill enhancement strategy: current state, target state, and a rough rollout plan.
- Present an engineering health and AI implementation assessment and 6 to 12 month roadmap to the COO

Days 91 to 100 and beyond
- Review progress against the first 90 days' priorities with the COO.
- Pilot the AI skill enhancement strategy with at least one project team and collect real feedback, not just intent.
- Socialize technical standards across all Staff Engineers and project teams.
- Establish the highest-value technical leadersh