Software Engineer, Agent - Public Sector
Sierra is hiring a Software Engineer, Agent - Public Sector in San Francisco, United States. It pays $180k-$390k a year and Level rates it ; you can apply on Sierra.
Level's read on this job
- Level rates this software engineer role Little AI ●○○○: aI is not part of the work.
- Pay on this posting starts 8% higher than the typical software engineer posting on Level.
- The posting mentions Clay and AI agents among its tools and skills.
- Sierra has 200 other open roles on Level.
AI in this role
About us
Sierra is the leading platform for customer-facing AI agents, working with many of the world's biggest brands — including The GAP, Rocket Mortgage, SoFi, Sutter Health, and SoftBank — to transform how they serve customers and grow their businesses. We are primarily an in-person company based in San Francisco, with growing offices across North America, Europe, and Asia.
We are guided by a set of values that are at the core of our actions and define our culture: Trust, Customer Obsession, Craftsmanship, Intensity, and a commitment to balancing Family along the way. These values are the foundation of our work, and we are committed to upholding them in everything we do.
Sierra was co-founded by Bret Taylor and Clay Bavor who first met while working together at Google over 20 years ago. Bret currently serves as Chairman of the Board of Open AI. Previously, he was co-CEO of Salesforce and CTO of Facebook. Clay spent 18 years at Google, where he most recently led Google Labs.
About the Public Sector team
Sierra recently received FedRAMP High certification, enabling us to bring our industry-leading technology to partners in the US public sector. We’re now building our founding public sector team to redefine the relationship between the government and its citizenry.
Today, our agents already enable citizens to access social services, report fraud, and understand complex government systems. Simultaneously, they empower government officials to better hear the concerns and inquiries of their constituencies.
We are explicitly nonpartisan and committed to empowering public servants to leverage AI to advance their important missions.
In our journey, we are guided by a set of values that are at the core of our actions and define our culture: Trust, Customer Obsession, Craftsmanship, Intensity, and Family. These values are the foundation of our work, and we are committed to upholding them in everything we do.
What you’ll do
Design and build production-grade AI agents for government institutions at the Federal and state level.
Partner closely with industry leadership to build our public sector team, including our capture motion, market strategy, and product components to scale quickly.
Work closely with institutions to understand their most urgent needs and identify novel opportunities to expand our impact - for example through outbound contacts or long-horizon agents.
Build the future of the platform: Your direct work with public sector customers will guide the evolution of Sierra's core platform. You'll surface unmet needs, prototype new tools and features, and collaborate with research, product, and platform to shape the future of AI agent development.
What you'll bring
Full stack software development skills and familiarity with AI development processes.
A passion for public sector work and a faith in the potential of our institutions to transform outcomes for their constituents.
Comfort working directly with customers to understand their needs and solve real-world problems. A core part of the role is coordinating directly with public servants at our partners to understand their workflows.
Even better…
Experience building conversational or long-horizon agents using proprietary or open source frameworks.
Demonstrated track record ambiguity, for example as part of a founding team, new initiative at a large enterprise, forward deployed engineering, or elsewhere.
A prior understanding of government work and its complexities, including procurement, regulation, and patterns of partnership.
Our values
Trust: We build trust with our customers with our accountability, empathy, quality, and responsiveness. We build trust in AI by making it more accessible, safe, and useful. We build trust with each other by showing up for each other professionally and personally, creating an environment that enables all of us to do our best work.
Customer Obsession: We deeply understand our customers’ business goals and relentlessly focus on driving outcomes, not just technical milestones. Everyone at the company knows and spends time with our customers. When our customer is having an issue, we drop everything and fix it.
Craftsmanship: We get the details right, from the words on the page to the system architecture. We have good taste. When we notice something isn’t right, we take the time to fix it. We are proud of the products we produce. We continuously self-reflect to continuously self-improve.
Intensity: We know we don’t have the luxury of patience. We play to win. We care about our product being the best, and when it isn’t, we fix it. When we fail, we talk about it openly and without blame so we succeed the next time.
Family: We know that balance and intensity are compatible, and we model it in our actions and processes. We are the best technology company for parents. We support and respect each other and celebrate each other’s personal and professional achievements.
What we offer
We want our benefits to reflect our values and offer the following to full-time employees:
Flexible (unlimited) paid time off
Medical, dental, and vision benefits for you and your family
Life insurance and disability benefits
Retirement plan dependent on country of employment
Parental leave
Fertility and family building benefits
Lunch, as well as delicious snacks and coffee to keep you energized when working onsite
Discretionary benefit stipend giving people the ability to spend where it matters most
Free alphorn lessons
These benefits are further detailed in Sierra's policies, may vary by region and employment type, and are subject to change at any time, consistent with the terms of any applicable compensation or benefits plans. Eligible full-time employees can participate in Sierra's equity plans subject to the terms of the applicable plans and policies.
Be you, with us
We're working to bring the transformative power of AI to every organization in the world. To do so, it is important to us that the diversity of our employees represents the diversity of our customers. We believe that our work and culture are better when we encourage, support, and respect different skills and experiences represented within our team. We encourage you to apply through the link on this page even if your experience doesn't precisely match the job description.
Sierra is a proud equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to any characteristic protected by applicable federal, state or local laws, including veteran status and disability status. Hiring decisions are made by people, based on merit. If you need a reasonable accommodation for a disability, a religious practice, pregnancy or any related condition at any point in the application or interview process, contact us at accommodations@sierra.ai. Requests are handled confidentially and do not affect your candidacy.
We will consider qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records in accordance with applicable fair chance laws.
How we rate this
Software Engineer, Agent - Public Sector at Sierra rates 10 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Little AI (AI Level 1 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.
Little AI. AI is not part of the work.
- ●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
- ●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
- ●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
- ●○○○ Little AI0 to 39
Levels come from how often the tools, models and workflows of the role are named in the posting itself. Read the description and count the AI tools, models and workflows it names.
Prepare for this job
Built from this posting and from similar jobs on Level.
Skills and AI tools this role asks for
Also common in software engineer jobs at this level
Pay
- This job starts at
- $180k
- Typical software engineer job
- $167k
This posting starts 8% above the typical software engineer job. See software engineer jobs
Questions you could be asked
- How do you decide when an AI agent can act on its own versus asking for approval first?
- Walk me through how you've used Clay in your day-to-day work.
Adapt your resume
- List these exact terms on your resume: AI agents and Clay. An applicant tracking system matches the wording, not the idea.
- Attach one line of real, concrete experience to at least one of them. A tool named with nothing behind it rarely survives a human read.
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