Software Engineer, Applied Ai
claylabs
Job Score
100 ptsAbout Clay
Our mission is to help organizations turn any growth idea into reality.
We see growth as a creative practice, not a formula. Finding and reaching your best-fit customers takes unique ideas and constant iteration. As AI makes execution faster and tactics easier to copy, creativity is the only lasting advantage. We're already helping thousands of customers — including Anthropic, Notion, Google, and Ramp — go to market with unique data, signals, and AI research.
In 2025, we raised a $100M Series C backed by world-class investors including Sequoia, CapitalG, and First Round — and crossed $100M in revenue.
In 2026, we announced our second employee tender offer in 9 months at a new $5B valuation. We also launched a community equity round, for our customers, agency partners, and club members.
Some things to know about us:
Our community includes 11,000+ customers, 150+ integration partners, 125+ agencies, 50+ Clay clubs, and 30k members on Slack.
Our culture is unique inside and outside of work. Our team members are also DJs, activists, writers, clowns, marathoners, skydivers, psychedelic therapists, social workers, and more.
All employees can work for free with world-class coaches who specialize in creativity, management, and more.
Our operating principles — including negative maintenance and non-attached action — guide our work. Read more about them here.
Read about us in the NYT, Forbes, First Round Review, and more.
Hear from our employees directly on our Glassdoor page!
About the Team
Clay's product is increasingly powered by AI agents — systems that research, enrich, and take action on behalf of our users, not just generate text. Several teams are working on different layers of this: agents that execute real go-to-market workflows end-to-end, and the shared platform (harness, memory, tools, retrieval, evals) that those agents run on.
This role is a shared entry point across those teams. Depending on your background and interests, you'll be matched to a specific team as you move through the process — but every team here is working on the same underlying problem: closing the gap between an agent that looks good in a demo and one that's dependable enough to run unattended in production.
About the Role
You'll work closely with product, research-adjacent teammates, and other engineers to make sure agents aren't just capable, but reliable, steerable, and worth trusting with real work. That means the job isn't only about improving model behavior in isolation — it's about turning those improvements into measurable gains in task completion, reliability, and time saved for the people using them.
What You'll Do
Depending on the team, you might work on:
Agent products
Design and iterate on agent behavior across real GTM workflows — for example, sourcing a Total Addressable Market (TAM) list by combining search, audience building, and enrichment into one flow
Map manual, multi-step workflows that GTM teams do today and turn them into agent-driven flows that are as good as, or better than, a human doing it by hand
Build and run evals that measure whether an agent actually completed the task correctly — not just whether the output looked plausible — and use them to catch regressions and failure modes
Analyze real failures in production and systematically improve robustness, not just patch the specific case in front of you
Work with product to take agent flows from early prototype through closed beta and into general availability, and help define what "good" looks like for each one
Agent platform & infrastructure
Build the core agent harness that other teams build on top of, including memory systems, tool infrastructure, and retrieval architecture
Improve agent performance through prompting strategies, tool-use design, and context construction — the layer between "the model can do this" and "the product does this reliably"
Design guardrails and safety checks so agents behave predictably in production
Build a cross-surface evals framework so every team building on the platform can measure quality, regressions, and performance the same way
Build feedback loops that turn real usage and production logs into better prompts, tools, and eval coverage over time
Support teams building their own forks or variants of the managed agent for their specific use case
What You'll Bring
Experience building or shipping production systems with LLMs or agents — not just prototyping. This might look like prompting and tool-use design, agent orchestration, retrieval, structured extraction, or fine-tuning
Strong backend fundamentals — APIs, databases, distributed systems — since agent features still need to run reliably inside real production infrastructure
Experience with model or agent evaluation: designing evals, measuring regressions, or turning fuzzy quality questions into measurable signals
A systems-and-outcomes mindset — you care about whether the product actually works for users, not just about model metrics in isolation
Comfort debugging messy, real-world failures and a bias toward shipping and iterating quickly in a space where best practices are still being figured out
Nice to Haves
Experience with agent frameworks, tool-calling systems, or retrieval architectures (vector search, hybrid search, RAG)
Experience building or maintaining eval/benchmark infrastructure for LLM-based systems, or running fine-tuning in production
Experience with GTM, sales, or marketing workflows (e.g. lead sourcing, enrichment, audience building)
Familiarity with Clay's stack: React, TypeScript, Python, AWS (Aurora/Postgres, ECS/Fargate, Lambda, OpenSearch, Elasticache/Redis), Terraform, Datadog
A growth mindset — we're building a team that's curious, open-minded, and happy to invest in each other's learning, not just their own
About Software Development
Software Development is one of the most dynamic and constantly evolving fields in the job market. Professionals in this area are responsible for creating, maintaining, and optimizing web, mobile, and desktop applications that impact millions of users daily.
Key languages and frameworks include JavaScript (React, Node.js, Vue.js), Python (Django, Flask), Java (Spring), PHP (Laravel), and TypeScript. Demand for full-stack developers continues to grow, especially in tech companies and startups.
Salaries range from entry-level to senior positions, with growing opportunities for remote work and international freelancing.
About Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence is currently the fastest-growing field in the technology market. The revolution in generative models (GPT, Claude, Gemini) has created massive demand for AI-specialized professionals.
Key areas of practice include Machine Learning Engineering, MLOps, Prompt Engineering, AI Research, and Applied AI. Python, TensorFlow, PyTorch, and LLM knowledge are essential skills.
AI salaries are the highest in the technology sector, with many remote work opportunities at international companies.
Discover Other Areas
Understand the scope of work, key skills, and tools used in different career areas.
About Design
The Design field, especially UX/UI and Product Design, has experienced significant growth in recent years. With accelerated business digitization, the demand for professionals who can create intuitive and pleasant digital experiences has never been higher.
Key skills include Figma, Sketch, Adobe XD, user research, design thinking, prototyping, and system design. Product designers are increasingly valued for their direct impact on business results.
Remote work has opened doors for Brazilian designers to work for global companies, with competitive salaries in dollars and euros.
About Infrastructure and DevOps
Infrastructure and DevOps are responsible for creating, maintaining, and optimizing IT environments that support applications at scale. This area is fundamental for system reliability and performance.
Key technologies include AWS, GCP, Azure, Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform, Ansible, CI/CD (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins), and monitoring (Datadog, Grafana, Prometheus).
DevOps engineers and SREs are highly sought-after professionals, with salaries among the highest in the technology sector.
About Agile
The Agile and Digital Transformation area is fundamental for organizations seeking efficiency and rapid adaptation. Agile professionals facilitate processes, eliminate bottlenecks, and promote a culture of continuous improvement.
Key certifications include CSM, PSM, SAFe, ICP, and Kanban. Knowledge of Scrum, Kanban, XP, and agile frameworks is essential, as are leadership and facilitation soft skills.
Senior Agile coaches and Scrum Masters are highly valued, especially in technology companies that adopt agile methodologies at scale.
About Ecommerce Manager
The Ecommerce Manager is the professional responsible for the entire strategic and operational management of online stores and marketplaces. They lead teams, define pricing, promotion, and catalog strategies, and monitor online sales performance across multiple platforms.
Key skills include catalog management, dynamic pricing, seasonal campaigns (Black Friday, Cyber Monday), marketplace management (Amazon, Mercado Livre, Shopee, Magalu), paid traffic, CRO, and team management. Knowledge of Shopify, VTEX, WooCommerce, Google Ads, Meta Ads, and performance metrics is a differentiator.
Ecommerce Managers in technology companies are highly valued, especially those who master multi-marketplace management, checkout optimization, and mobile commerce strategies. The field offers opportunities from ecommerce manager to head of ecommerce, with a focus on revenue, customer experience, and growth.
About Scrum Master
The Scrum Master is the professional responsible for facilitating the adoption of Scrum and agile practices within development teams. They act as servant leaders, removing impediments, promoting continuous improvement, and ensuring Scrum events and ceremonies happen in the best possible way.
Key skills include event facilitation (sprint planning, daily, review, retrospective), backlog management, team coaching, conflict resolution, and agile metrics (velocity, burndown, cycle time). Knowledge of Jira, Trello, Azure DevOps, and frameworks like Kanban, XP, and SAFe is a differentiator.
Scrum Masters in technology companies are highly valued, especially those who can promote team autonomy, create psychologically safe environments, and lead agile transformations at scale. The field offers opportunities from junior scrum master to agile coach, head of agile, and director of agile transformation.