Senior AI Software Engineer, Python

Scorpion is the leading provider of technology and services helping local businesses thrive. We help customers understand local market dynamics, make the most of their marketing, and deliver experiences their customers will love. Our tools combine AI support with human local expertise to drive success.

The Senior AI Software Engineer, Python will be responsible for making Scorpion’s Conversational Intelligence Platform production‑grade by building reliable, observable, and scalable infrastructure for real‑time AI workloads, including LLM orchestration, streaming responses, and event‑driven messaging across multiple communication channels.

This role owns the runtime reliability of systems that process LLM inference pipelines, manage back pressure across async workloads, and maintain clean service boundaries with downstream teams. Operating within an established architecture, the Senior AI Software Engineer, Python is responsible for the operational excellence required to make the platform production‑ready.

• Own the reliability of the event‑driven messaging layer, including back pressure management, idempotency, dead‑letter handling, and retry strategies.
• Build and operate the infrastructure that runs LLM orchestration workloads at scale.
• Own the operational data layer for the CI runtime, including state management, session persistence, and real‑time data access patterns.
• Own observability for the CI platform, including structured logging, distributed tracing (Open Telemetry), and error tracking (Sentry).
• Maintain and harden the interfaces between CI and downstream platforms, including contract testing, versioning, and failure handling.
• Conduct code reviews and mentor team members on Python engineering practices and production readiness.
• Own production support for CI infrastructure, including on‑call responsibilities and incident response.

• Experience
  • 5+ Years of Experience or Relevant Experience.
  • Developing production‑grade Python services at scale.
  • Operating real‑time or high‑throughput infrastructure supporting AI/ML workloads.
  • Designing and operating distributed, event‑driven systems in production environments.
• Hard / Technical Skills
  • Deep command of Python internals: async/await lifecycle, event loop mechanics, GIL implications for concurrency strategy, memory profiling.
  • Production experience with Pydantic, type systems, and structured data modeling in high‑throughput services.
  • Strong opinions on code organization, error handling patterns, and testability in long‑lived Python codebases.
  • Hands‑on experience operating LLM inference infrastructure at scale.
  • Deep experience with No
    
    SQL data modeling: partition strategy, consistency tradeoffs, query cost optimization, and hot‑partition avoidance.
  • Experience with event‑driven architecture in production: back pressure, idempotency, dead‑letter handling, retry strategies.
  • Proficiency with observability tooling: distributed tracing (Open Telemetry), structured logging, error tracking (Sentry).
  • Experience with Azure cloud platform services.
• Professional / Core Skills
  • Ability to negotiate technical boundaries with teams that own upstream and downstream services.
  • Clear, direct communication in design discussions, incident response, and code review.

We acknowledge that states have passed legislation promoting pay transparency. As a national employer, Scorpion has made the decision to post our expected pay rate or pay range (as applicable) in all our job postings, regardless of geographic location.

• The base salary range is $135,000 (entry‑level) - $175,000 (highly experienced), exclusive of fringe benefits. If you are hired at Scorpion, your final base salary compensation will be determined based on factors such as geographic location, skills, education, and/or experience. Additionally, we believe in the importance of pay equity and consider the internal equity of our current team members as a part of any final offer.
  
  Please keep in mind that the range mentioned above is the total salary range for the role. Hiring at the maximum of the range would not be typical in order to allow for future &…