Staff Engineer

Smalk is on a mission to help brands understand and control their presence in AI-generated answers.
ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude are becoming the new search engines. We build the platform that tracks AI bot visits, analyzes LLM citations, and places ads on the pages these models use as sources. Paris-based, investor-backed, growing fast.

The Role

You'll be our first Staff Engineer, joining a small team with a clear mandate: architect, coordinate, and guarantee the technical excellence of everything we build. Hands-on technical leadership - you'll write code, review code, design systems, and set the engineering standards that scale the team.

You'll work directly with the CTO as the technical bridge between the Publisher and Advertiser squads.

What You'll Own

Architecture & system design

The platform is in production and growing. You'll inherit a multi-service architecture (Django + FastAPI tracking + Celery workers), PostgreSQL with advanced features, Redis multi-tier caching, Fly.io deployment, and LLM integrations. Ahead: ad server evolution toward globally distributed low-latency serving, SSP/DSP foundations, analytics layer, multi-tenant isolation.

Code quality & engineering standards

Systematize existing conventions into enforced standards. Design review processes that catch issues without bottlenecking velocity. Prioritize technical debt - fix what matters, delete what doesn't. Own the testing strategy.

Cross-squad coordination

Two squads, one codebase. Design clean interfaces between domains. Review cross-cutting changes. Facilitate architectural decisions. Run lightweight working sessions, not committees.

Technical mentorship

Guide developers in their growth. Pair on complex problems. Help the Data Scientist ship ML models to production. Build a culture of writing things down - ADRs, technical RFCs, runbooks.

Key Technical Domains

• State machines - Ad inventory with multi-party negotiation, content generation pipeline, campaign lifecycle
• High-performance systems - FastAPI tracking, low-latency ad serving, Redis pipelines, isolated Celery queues
• LLM integration - LLM-agnostic content generation, vector search (RAG), batch processing
• Data architecture - Aggregation models, scoring engines, prediction models, denormalization patterns

How We Work

We believe developers are AI Agent Team Leads, not craftsmen typing code line by line. As Staff Engineer, you'll champion this culture - helping the team leverage AI agents effectively, setting up the tooling and practices that make agent-driven development the default, and measuring engineers by the quality of their system design, not their keystroke count.

What We're Looking For

Must have:

• 8+ years software engineering, 3+ in a senior/staff role
• Deep Python/Django expertise at scale
• Strong system design - whiteboard it and implement it
• Leading without managing - influence through technical excellence
• Track record improving engineering culture (testing, review, docs, standards)
• Excellent judgment on build vs. buy, now vs. later, abstract vs. concrete
• Comfort with ambiguity

Nice to have:

• AdTech or marketplace platforms at scale
• LLM-powered products (prompt engineering, RAG, vector databases)
• FastAPI and async Python alongside Django
• PostgreSQL internals (query planner, index strategies)
• Multi-service architectures
• First staff/principal hire at a growing startup

Compensation & Benefits

• Competitive salary + significant equity (BSPCE)
• Remote-friendly with regular team touchpoints
• Shape the engineering culture and architecture for years to come
• High autonomy - you define what "good" looks like
• Growth path to Principal Engineer or VP Engineering

Apply: Send your CV and a few lines to hey@smalk.ai