Senior AI Software Engineer, Python

Remote from: USA
Salary, yearly, USD: 135,000 - 175,000
Department: Software Engineering
Employment type: Full Time,
Job posted: 24 Jun 2026
Apply before: 24 Jul 2026
Experience level: Senior
Views / Applies: 20 / 2

About company

About Scorpion

Scorpion is the leading provider of technology and services helping local businesses thrive.

Marketing & Advertising
2001

Actively Hiring

AI Summary

This Senior AI Software Engineer role at Scorpion focuses on building production-grade infrastructure for the Conversational Intelligence Platform. The position involves owning the reliability of event-driven messaging layers, operating LLM orchestration at scale, and ensuring observability through distributed tracing and logging. The ideal candidate has deep Python expertise, experience with async programming, NoSQL data modeling, and cloud services like Azure. This is a senior-level role requiring over 5 years of experience and a strong background in real-time AI workloads.

Role DNA

Job Complexity

Easy Hard

Pace & Pressure

Relaxed Fast-paced

Autonomy Level

Guided Full Ownership

Communication Load

Independent Highly Collaborative

AI Insight This role requires deep knowledge of Python internals, event-driven systems, and LLM orchestration, along with production operational experience. The combination of AI/ML and infrastructure complexity makes it challenging.

Salary Analysis

AI Insight The offered salary range of $135,000 - $175,000 is competitive for a Senior AI Software Engineer in the US market, where typical salaries range from $130,000 to $190,000. The median of $155,000 aligns well with industry standards for this level of expertise.

Key Skills

Python AI LLM Event-Driven Architecture Azure NoSQL Observability OpenTelemetry Distributed Systems Infrastructure

Cover Letter Sample

Dear Hiring Team,

I am writing to express my interest in the Senior AI Software Engineer, Python role at Scorpion. With over 5 years of experience building production-grade Python services and operating real-time AI infrastructure, I am confident in my ability to drive the reliability and scalability of your Conversational Intelligence Platform. My expertise in event-driven architecture, LLM orchestration, and observability tooling like OpenTelemetry aligns perfectly with the responsibilities outlined. I am excited about the opportunity to contribute to Scorpion's mission of helping local businesses thrive through technology. Thank you for considering my application.

Possible Interview Questions

How would you design a reliable event-driven messaging layer for real-time AI workloads?

I would use a message broker like Azure Event Hubs or Kafka to ensure durability and scalability. I'd implement idempotent consumers, dead-letter queues for failed messages, and retry strategies with exponential backoff. For backpressure, I'd use async queues with bounded capacity and monitor consumer lag to trigger auto-scaling.

Explain how you would handle backpressure in an async Python service processing LLM responses.

I'd use asyncio queues with a maximum size to limit in-flight requests. When the queue is full, I would apply rate limiting or circuit breakers to reject new requests gracefully. Additionally, I'd monitor queue depth and adjust consumer concurrency dynamically based on load.

Describe your experience with Python async/await internals and event loop tuning.

I have worked extensively with asyncio, including event loop customization, task management, and debugging with asyncio.run or loop.run_until_complete. I've tuned event loops by adjusting selector polling, using uvloop for performance, and profiling coroutine yields to minimize blocking operations.

How do you ensure observability for distributed systems with LLM inference pipelines?

I implement structured logging with correlation IDs, distributed tracing using OpenTelemetry to track requests across services, and metrics (latency, error rates, token usage) with tools like Prometheus. I also set up dashboards and alerts in Grafana to monitor system health and performance.

Walk me through a time you had to debug a production issue in a high-throughput Python service.

In a previous role, we had a memory leak in an async service. I used memory profiling with tracemalloc and objgraph to identify unclosed async generators. After fixing, I added regression tests and increased observability with heap snapshots. I also coordinated with the team to roll out the fix without downtime.

About Us

Scorpion is the leading provider of technology and services helping local businesses thrive. We do this by helping customers understand local market dynamics, make the most of their marketing, and deliver experiences their customers will love. We offer tools to know what’s going on with marketing, competitors, and customers. We offer a unique blend of AI support and teams of real human people with local expertise committed to customer success. At Scorpion, we are ready to do whatever it takes to help our clients reach their goals. Our technology and personalized tools bring everything together to help local businesses easily understand their unique business, market, and customer needs. We put SEO, Reviews, Advertising, Email Marketing, Chat and Messaging, Social Media, Website, Lead Management, Appointment Scheduling, and more to work for local businesses. We’re a technology-led service with a human touch.

About the Role

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 backpressure 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.

What Your Success Will Look Like

Own the reliability of the event-driven messaging layer, including backpressure 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 (OpenTelemetry), 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.

Who You Are And What You Bring

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 NoSQL data modeling: partition strategy, consistency tradeoffs, query cost optimization, and hot-partition avoidance.
- Experience with event-driven architecture in production: backpressure, idempotency, dead-letter handling, retry strategies.
- Proficiency with observability tooling: distributed tracing (OpenTelemetry), 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.

Our Scorpion Values

Winning Mindset: When our clients win, we win.
Genuine Care: We only succeed when we are truly invested in our clients and each other.
Unmatched Results: We deliver more than expected–and then some–driving the best results and impacting lives.
Constant Improvement: We believe there is always a better way. We learn we ask “What if?” we build and then do it again.
Unbeatable Teamwork: We come from different backgrounds but have the same vision. We only get there by doing it together, as a team.

Compensation

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 & continued salary growth.
The compensation package may also include incentive compensation opportunities in the form of discretionary bonuses or commissions.

Our Benefits

We invest in our employees by offering them diverse benefits from best-in-class carriers. These benefits provide enough choice and flexibility to keep our employees and their families healthy and happy—today and tomorrow.

100% employer-paid medical, dental, and vision insurance
Flexible paid time off, so you can rest, relax, and recharge away from work
Paid parental leave
Paid cell phone and service
Remote office allowance
Professional development and development courses
Regular manager check-ins to drive performance and career growth through Lattice

Work Location & Flexibility

Scorpion supports a range of work arrangements, including in-office, hybrid, and remote roles. For positions designated as remote, employees who live within commuting distance of a Scorpion office may be asked to work from the office based on team needs, collaboration opportunities, or business priorities. Specific expectations will be discussed during the interview process.

Scorpion is an equal opportunity employer and considers applicants for all positions without regard to race, color, religion or belief, sex, age, national origin, citizenship status, marital status, military/veteran status, genetic information, sexual orientation, gender identity, or physical or mental disability. We believe in creating a dynamic work environment that values diversity and inclusion.

Reasonable Accommodations

Scorpion participates in the E-Verify program to confirm employment authorization of all newly hired employees. The E-Verify process is completed during new hire onboarding and completion of the Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification, at the start of employment. E-Verify is not used as a tool to pre-screen candidates. For more information on E-Verify, please visit www.uscis.gov.

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