Senior Software Engineer, AI Infrastructure - Developer Tooling

Senior Software Engineer, AI Infrastructure - Developer Tooling

Location:

Seattle

Team:
Technology

Employment Type:

Regular

Job Code: A188660B

About the Team We're building the AI-powered backbone of our developer tools. You'll work on three core systems: a retrieval infrastructure powering our AI products, a coding agent that assists users in writing code, and the evaluation frameworks that measure their effectiveness.

• Retrieval Systems (RAG Infrastructure)
  • Design and scale retrieval pipelines including vector search, BM25, and hybrid retrieval strategies
  • Build and optimize embedding pipelines, chunking strategies, and re‑ranking systems
  • Develop query understanding and rewriting components to improve retrieval relevance
  • Manage vector database infrastructure at production scale
• Coding Agent Development
  • Build agent architectures that support multi‑step code generation, refactoring, debugging, and diagnostics
  • Implement tool‑use patterns (function calling, code execution sandboxing, file system interaction)
  • Develop context management strategies for long‑form code understanding
• Evaluation & Benchmarking
  • Design and maintain evaluation frameworks for retrieval quality and agent task completion
  • Build custom benchmark suites for real‑world coding task assessment
  • Create reproducible testing infrastructure with automated regression detection

The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $177688 - $341734 annually.

Compensation may vary outside of this range depending on a number of factors, including a candidate’s qualifications, skills, competencies and experience, and location. Base pay is one part of the Total Package that is provided to compensate and recognize employees for their work, and this role may be eligible for additional discretionary bonuses/incentives, and restricted stock units.

Benefits may vary depending on the nature of employment and the country work location. Employees have day one access to medical, dental, and vision insurance, a 401(k) savings plan with company match, paid parental leave, short-term and long-term disability coverage, life insurance, wellbeing benefits, among others. Employees also receive 10 paid holidays per year, 10 paid sick days per year and 17 days of Paid Personal Time (prorated upon hire with increasing accruals by tenure).

For Los Angeles County (unincorporated) Candidates:
Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with all federal, state, and local laws including the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers and the California Fair Chance Act. Our company believes that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship on the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of the conditional offer of employment:
1. Interacting and occasionally having unsupervised contact with internal/external clients and/or colleagues;
2. Appropriately handling and managing confidential information including proprietary and trade secret information and access to information technology systems; and
3. Exercising sound judgment.

Founded in 2012, Byte Dance's mission is to inspire creativity and enrich life. With a suite of more than a dozen products, including Tik Tok, Lemon8, Cap Cut and Pico as well as platforms specific to the China market, including Toutiao, Douyin, and Xigua, Byte Dance has made it easier and more fun for people to connect with, consume, and create content.

Inspiring creativity is at the core of Byte Dance's mission. Our innovative products are built to help people authentically express themselves, discover and connect – and our global, diverse teams make that possible. Together, we create value for our communities, inspire creativity and enrich life - a mission we work towards every day. As Byte Dancers, we strive to do great things with great people.

We lead with curiosity, humility, and a desire to make impact in a rapidly growing tech company. By constantly iterating and fostering an "Always Day 1" mindset, we achieve meaningful breakthroughs for ourselves, our…