Staff Software Engineer, Agents

Harvey
San Francisco, US
On-site

Who this role is best for

Best suited to senior software engineers with Python and LLM API experience who thrive in fast-paced, iterative environments focused on agentic AI systems.

Best fit for

  • Senior engineers who prioritize shipping quickly over perfection.
    — “act quickly on clear judgment over perfect information
  • Python developers experienced with LLM APIs and agent frameworks.
    — “Proficiency in Python and experience working with LLM APIs and agent frameworks
  • Engineers comfortable making model selection decisions for domain-specific agents.
    — “make model selection decisions

Things to consider

  • Requires 8+ years of post-degree software engineering experience.
    — “8+ years (post-BS/MS) of software engineering experience

How to stand out

  • Highlight specific examples of optimizing agent performance through prompt engineering.
    — “Optimize agent performance through prompt engineering
  • Demonstrate experience designing practical evaluations for AI systems.
    — “design practical evaluations that capture what 'excellent' means
  • Showcase projects where you improved latency in AI systems.
    — “improving the latency and quality of agents
Pace · Fast PacedCollaboration · HighAutonomy · MediumDecision Impact · TeamLevel · Senior

Derived from job-description analysis by Serendipath's career intelligence engine.

What success looks like

  • Design environments and actions for agentic professional work
  • Optimize agent performance
  • Develop evals that enable faster iteration loops
Typical background
Software EngineeringAgentic AIModel Infrastructure

Skills & requirements

Required

Agentic AIModel SelectionPrompt EngineeringContext Window ManagementEvaluation Harness DevelopmentLow-latency Agent ExecutionObservability And InstrumentationAgentic Systems

Preferred

Legal WorkflowsDomain-specific AgentsAgentic Systems

Stack & domain

Agentic AiEnterprise-grade PlatformDomain ExpertiseAi AgentsLegal WorkflowsPrompt EngineeringModel SelectionTool DesignSkill WritingContext Window ManagementEval Harness DevelopmentLow-latency Agent ExecutionCaching StrategiesParallel Tool CallsSubagent PatternsObservabilityInstrumentationProfiling Agent BehaviorIdentifying BottlenecksOptimization DecisionsNew Developments In Agentic SystemsPartnering With CustomersPmsUnderstanding Legal WorkflowsDesigning Practical EvaluationsCapturing What “excellent” MeansShipping AgentsOptimizing Agent PerformanceWorking With Model Infra TeamImproving ObservabilityStaying Current On New DevelopmentsBringing Learnings Back To ProductsLegal And Professional ServicesFrontier Agentic AiDeep Domain Expertise

About the role

Original posting from Harvey via Ashby

WHY HARVEY

At Harvey, we’re transforming how legal and professional services operate. By combining frontier agentic AI, an enterprise-grade platform, and deep domain expertise, we’re reshaping how critical knowledge work gets done for decades to come.

This is a rare chance to help build a generational company at a true inflection point. With 1500+ customers in 60+ countries, strong product-market fit, and world-class investor support, we’re scaling fast and defining a new category in real time. The work is ambitious, the bar is high, and the opportunity for growth — personal, professional, and financial — is unmatched.

Our team moves fast, takes ownership, and is deeply committed to the mission — operating with intensity, staying close to our customers, and pushing each other for excellence. We live by three values: Decisiveness, Simplicity, and Job's Not Finished. We act quickly on clear judgment over perfect information, we believe simplicity is what scales, and we're never satisfied with where we are. If you want to do the best work of your career alongside people who share that drive, we'd love to build with you.

At Harvey, the future of professional services is being written today — and we’re just getting started.

ROLE OVERVIEW

As a Software Engineer, Agents, you'll build the systems that make our AI agents indispensable to legal professionals.

You will design environments and actions for agentic professional work, make model selection decisions, manage context windows, create optimal tools, and develop evals that enable faster iteration loops to unlock new capabilities.

We're looking for engineers and researchers who are immersed in the space, driven to ship impactful products, and are experienced in using practical evaluations to drive task completion quality and customer delight.

REPRESENTATIVE PROJECTS

  • Save weeks of effort on high pressure M&A deals by automating information requests and diligence checks across hundreds of thousands of files with retrieval and file editing agents.
  • Dramatically speed up deal turnaround speed by improving the latency and quality of agents on applying a standard legal "playbook" to contracts.
  • Ensure that our clients win their complex, data-hungry litigation cases by optimizing our multi-source retrieval agents.
  • Enable board-ready PowerPoint generation by tuning the harness and libraries for coding agents.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

  • Partner with customers and PMs to understand legal workflows, design practical evaluations that capture what “excellent” means, and ship agents that get the job done.
  • Optimize agent performance through prompt engineering, model selection, tool design, skill writing, context window management, and eval harness development.
  • Work with our model infra team to design and implement infrastructure for low-latency agent execution, including caching strategies, parallel tool calls, or subagent patterns.
  • Improve our observability and instrumentation to profile agent behavior, identify bottlenecks, and drive optimization decisions.
  • Stay current on new developments in agentic systems and bring those learnings back to the products we build.

WHAT YOU HAVE

  • Passion for building effective domain-specific agents.
  • Iterative mindset: you develop proof of concepts, make decisions quickly, and ship v0s.
  • Comfortable with when and how to use evaluations to drive quality.
  • Humble and adaptable about code and frameworks. We expect you to drive adoption of new best practices as they develop.
  • 8+ years (post-BS/MS) of software engineering experience.
  • We are hiring for this role across Mid, Senior, and Staff levels.
  • Proficiency in Python and experience working with LLM APIs and agent frameworks.
  • Experience with shipping user-facing products, either on the backend or full-stack.

COMPENSATION RANGE

$231,000 - $340,000 USD

DEPENDING ON YOUR LOCATION, AN APPLICANT PRIVACY NOTICE MAY APPLY TO YOU. YOU CAN FIND ALL OF OUR APPLICANT PRIVACY NOTICES [HERE https://www.notion.so/harveyai/Harvey-Candidate-Privacy-Policies-319ac3fcdd7a803bb807d5094f249922].

#LI-BB1

Harvey is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, national origin, disability, age, genetic information, veteran status, marital status, pregnancy or related condition, or any other basis protected by law.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made by emailing accommodations@harvey.ai

Source: Harvey careers (Ashby)

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