Staff Software Engineer, Core Infrastructure
Harvey is hiring a Staff Software Engineer, Core Infrastructure in New York, United States. It pays $201k-$264k a year and Level rates it ; you can apply on Harvey.
Level's read on this job
- Level rates this software engineer role Builds AI ●●●●: the job is building AI systems.
- Pay on this posting starts 20% higher than the typical software engineer posting on Level.
- The posting mentions Azure, Google Cloud and Kubernetes among its tools and skills.
- Level classes it as a lead role.
- Harvey has 357 other open roles on Level.
AI in this role
Design and build scalable core infrastructure systems powering a global legal AI platform processing billions of prompt tokens.
At Harvey, we’re transforming how legal and professional services operate. By combining frontier agentic AI, an enterprise-grade platform, and deep domain expertise, we’re reshaping how critical knowledge work gets done for decades to come.
This is a rare chance to help build a generational company at a true inflection point. We have strong product-market fit and world-class investor support. We’re scaling fast and defining a new category in real time. The work is ambitious, the bar is high, and the opportunity for growth — personal, professional, and financial — is unmatched.
Our team moves fast, takes ownership, and is deeply committed to the mission — operating with intensity, staying close to our customers, and pushing each other for excellence. We live by three values: Decisiveness, Simplicity, and Job's Not Finished. We act quickly on clear judgment over perfect information, we believe simplicity is what scales, and we're never satisfied with where we are. If you want to do the best work of your career alongside people who share that drive, we'd love to build with you.
At Harvey, the future of professional services is being written today — and we’re just getting started.
Role OverviewAs a Staff Software Engineer on the Core Infrastructure team at Harvey, you'll play a critical role in designing and building new infrastructure systems while equally scaling and strengthening our existing infrastructure. Our infrastructure is the foundation that powers every user interaction with Harvey — processing billions of prompt tokens and millions of daily requests across our global legal AI platform.
You'll work in an environment balanced between innovation — building new systems — and operational excellence, ensuring that Harvey remains resilient and efficient as it scales products, regions, customers, and usage. Your contributions will directly impact the reliability, scalability, and security of our platform as we serve the world's leading law firms and professional service providers.
This role is based in New York City, New York. We use an in-person work model and offer relocation assistance to new employees.
What You’ll Do
Design and build scalable, fault-tolerant infrastructure systems that power Harvey's AI platform across multiple cloud regions
Own and evolve our multi-cloud infrastructure (Azure, GCP), including Kubernetes orchestration, networking, and container management
Lead technical initiatives around observability, incident response, and operational excellence — building systems that enable rapid detection and resolution of issues
Architect and optimize our distributed systems for reliability, including load balancing, quota management, and failover mechanisms
Partner with Product Engineering and Security teams to ensure our infrastructure is an accelerant, not a constraint
Drive infrastructure-as-code practices using tools like Terraform and Pulumi to enable reproducible, auditable deployments
Mentor engineers and raise the technical bar across the organization through code reviews, design reviews, and technical leadership
Design and implement a next-generation model proxy architecture that routes millions of daily inference requests while maintaining model API compatibility and enabling seamless model integration
Build distributed rate limiting and quota management systems using Redis-backed algorithms to handle bursty traffic patterns without degrading user experience
Architect multi-region deployment strategies that meet strict data residency requirements for global enterprise customers
Develop comprehensive observability infrastructure with granular SLA monitoring, burn rate alerts, and detailed token attribution for cost tracking
Lead the evolution of our CI/CD pipelines to improve developer velocity while maintaining production stability
What You Have
10+ years of experience in Infrastructure Engineering or Platform Engineering in a production environment
Long track record building and scaling complex, large-scale distributed systems
Deep proficiency with cloud infrastructure platforms (Azure preferred; GCP or AWS experience transfers well)
Strong fluency in Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools — Terraform, Pulumi, or CloudFormation
Solid understanding of Kubernetes, container orchestration, networking, and cloud security at scale
Experience with observability tools (Datadog, Sentry) and incident response practices (PagerDuty, Incident.io)
Strong programming skills in Python, Go, or similar languages
Excellent problem-solving skills, a "spidey sense" of where things could go wrong, and a commitment to operational excellence
Experience building infrastructure for AI/ML workloads or high-throughput inference systems
Background with distributed rate limiting, load balancing, or quota management systems
Experience operating multi-tenant platforms with strict security and compliance requirements
Track record of leading complex cross-functional projects and delivering measurable impact
$201,000 - $264,000 USD
Depending on your location, an Applicant Privacy Notice may apply to you. You can find all of our Applicant Privacy Notices here.
#LI-AN2
Harvey is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, national origin, disability, age, genetic information, veteran status, marital status, pregnancy or related condition, or any other basis protected by law.
We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made by emailing accommodations@harvey.ai
How we rate this
Staff Software Engineer, Core Infrastructure at Harvey rates 85 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Builds AI (AI Level 4 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.
Builds AI. The job is building AI systems.
- ●●●● 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
- $201k
- Typical software engineer job
- $168k
This posting starts 20% above the typical software engineer job. See software engineer jobs
Questions you could be asked
- Tell me about a project where infrastructure was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where distributed systems was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where scalability was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where observability was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where reliability was part of your work. What did you do?
Adapt your resume
- List these exact terms on your resume: Infrastructure, Distributed Systems, Scalability, Observability, and Reliability. 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.
- Lead with what you built, trained or shipped. This role is judged on the AI system itself, not the tools around it.
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