Retail Software Engineer

** Description
- ** This role will lead the development of AI-powered mobile experiences for the retail industry. You will partner with the product owner, subject matter experts, and customers to translate requirements into working software. Combine hands-on expertise in AI applications, agent harnesses, model inference, and Android development to create a reliable, scalable commercial product.  
** Responsibilities
* ** Lead software development from initial concept and prototypes through production readiness. Contribute directly to implementation across Android applications, backend services, and AI agents.
* Work with the product owner, subject matter experts, and customers to understand requirements, define acceptance criteria, assess technical trade-offs, and establish development priorities.
* Collaborate with forward-deployed engineers and customer IT to gather feedback, validate features, troubleshoot integration issues, and develop fixes. Incorporate findings into ongoing development.
* Build and maintain agent harnesses that connect AI models with context, tools, memory, permissions, and workflows. Support multi-step execution, task interruptions, recovery, and human approvals.
* Select, integrate, and evaluate AI models for reasoning, tool use, and vision. Optimize inference quality, latency, reliability, and cost across cloud and edge environments.
* Develop Android applications for retail handhelds and tablets, including adaptive interfaces, voice, camera, scanning, and payments. Connect applications securely to enterprise systems through APIs, events, and adapters.
* Establish engineering practices for AI-assisted coding, code review, automated testing, security, continuous integration, and releases. Ensure generated code is verified, and the software can be monitored and supported.
* Mentor engineers, review designs and code, and lead technical issue resolution. Turn recurring customer requirements into reusable capabilities that support a maintainable, scalable commercial product.  
** Education and Experience Required
*** Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
* 8+ years of software engineering experience, including technical leadership and hands-on development of new products from concept through production.
* Demonstrated experience building AI applications using large language models, agent frameworks or harnesses, tool calling, retrieval, inference, and evaluation.
* Strong experience developing Android applications and integrating mobile software with backend services, enterprise systems, and device capabilities.
* Experience working with customers, customer IT, or customer-facing engineers to develop features and resolve technical issues. Practical use of AI-assisted development tools is required; retail technology experience is preferred.  
** Knowledge and Skills
*** Strong understanding of AI application architecture and how models, agent harnesses, context, retrieval, memory, and tools work together to complete tasks.
* Practical knowledge of model selection and inference trade-offs, including accuracy, latency, throughput, cost, privacy, and cloud versus on-device execution.
* Strong Android skills, preferably Kotlin and Jetpack Compose, including context-aware interfaces, device APIs, intermittent connectivity, and workflow interruption and recovery.
* Strong mobile and backend engineering skills, including APIs, distributed systems, and enterprise integration that preserves existing business rules and transaction integrity.
* Proficiency with AI-assisted coding and agentic development tools, including preparing context, breaking down tasks, reviewing generated code, debugging, and verifying results.
* Ability to translate customer specifications into technical designs and acceptance tests, diagnose failures, and evaluate AI workflows against realistic tasks and measurable outcomes.
* Knowledge of secure software development, authentication, authorization, data privacy, audit logging, automated testing, continuous integration, and release management.
* Clear communication, strong technical judgment, and effective mentoring skills. Ability to manage evolving requirements and work across teams while balancing customer needs with long-term product maintainability.

The pay range for this role is **$147,050
** to **$230,850
** USD annually with additional opportunities for pay in the form of bonus and/or equity (applies to United…