Senior Full Stack Engineer; AI Platform

We fuse rigorous, methodologically sound analysis with our cutting-edge technology platform, Narrative Analytics®. This powerful combination enables us to quantitatively analyze open-source media, deliver strategic recommendations, and craft executive-level communication strategies for clients with missions that matter.

Our team is a vibrant mix of communication specialists, data scientists, and subject matter experts with extensive experience across U.S. Government agencies, non-profit organizations, and Fortune 500 companies. By joining Protagonist, you’ll immerse yourself in a collaborative environment where innovation thrives, and your contributions truly matter.

• Innovative Solutions: We co-develop cutting-edge solutions with our clients to address tough communication problems and capitalize on opportunities to make a tangible impact.
• Data-Driven Insights: Our tools and methodologies provide actionable insights that help clients meet their communication objectives and stay ahead of global challenges.
• Applied Expertise: We integrate our solutions within client organizations, leveraging our profound expertise to address critical issues and ensure sustainable success.

At Protagonist, you’ll work on compelling projects that make a real difference. We seek talented individuals eager to contribute to our mission and grow alongside us. If you’re passionate about communication, data analysis, and making an impact, we invite you to explore a career with Protagonist.

Ready to take the next step in your career? Join us at Protagonist and be part of a team that's making a difference.

Job Description

Protagonist is seeking a Senior Full Stack Engineer (AI Platform) to help build and evolve ourinternalAI-powered platform. This role is designed for an experienced engineer who can own production systems end-to-end—from backend services and data infrastructure to intuitive, analyst-facing applications—and who is excited to apply modern AI capabilities within a robust software platform.

The ideal candidate is a strong full-stack engineer first, with experience building AI- and LLM-powered applications in production. You are comfortable working across the stack, making pragmatic architecture decisions, and taking ownership from technical design through deployment. You thrive in a fast-paced, small-team environment, are comfortable navigating ambiguity and complex technical problems, and bring the judgment and experience to help raise the bar for the engineers around you.

Reporting to the VP of Technology, you will design and build core applications and services that powerour platform, partnering directly with technical leadership to shape product and architectural direction. You will also collaborate with our customer-facing team to translate analyst and customer needs into scalable, reliable software.

• Own features end-to-end across the platform:
  Django REST APIs and data models, React/Type Script UI, workflow pipelines, and LLM agent services, from technical design through coding, testing, and production
• Partner with technical leadership on architecture and roadmap: turn product vision into system designs, pressure-test ideas, and help drive the technical direction of the platform
• Build LLM-powered systems on AWS Bedrock: tool-using agents, RAG retrieval over Open Search, prompt engineering, evaluation, and cost/usage controls
• Develop data and ML workflows in Metafloworchestrated on Argo Workflows/Kubernetes: ingestion, enrichment, classification, and document processing at scale
• Design for thewhole system:
  PostgreSQL schema, Open Search indexing and search, event-driven processing…