Staff/Senior Software Engineer at CHAI AI in Palo Alto, CA

**About CHAI AI**

CHAI is a social AI platform where millions of people create, share, and talk to AI characters. As of Sep 2026, it has 10 million active users and $100 million ARR. After receiving over $55M in funding from investors such as AMD and CoreWeave, CHAI AI is actively hiring engineers to expand its team.

**About the team**

Engineering is 15–20 people with a flat structure. High impact on the product, fast iteration, and clear metrics to measure against.

**What you will work on**

Fit a fleet of models into a fixed GPU budget and keep them fast for 10M users. You'll own serving infrastructure, latency, and cost per token — deciding what to optimize, what to rebuild, and when to add capacity.

**You might thrive in this role if you…**

- 2+ years of software engineering experience

- High motivation and talented.

- High ownership: comfortable with ambiguity, able to define the problem and the plan rather than execute a predefined spec.

- Able to work in person at our Palo Alto Office.

**Compensation and benefits**

Top pay AI startup in Bay Area. $609,000 – $1,050,000, paid 100% in cash.

We benchmark against total comp at Meta, Google, and OpenAI — and pay that number in cash, not equity, with the option to trade a portion of cash for stock options.

Health, 401k, unlimited PTO.

**Our interview process**

We run a fast process - an offer can be given within 7 days of first contact.

1. 20 minute phone screen with our founder or engineer

2. 20 minute personality assessment

3. Take home assessment. 60-90 minutes to complete.

4. One day onsite interview.

Pay: $609,000.00 - $1,050,000.00 per year

Benefits:

• 401(k) matching
• Health insurance
• Relocation assistance
• Unlimited paid time off
• Visa sponsorship

Work Location: In person