Interested in this AI Agent Developer role at Temporal Technologies?
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About This Role
### About Us
Temporal is an open source programming model that can simplify code, make applications more reliable, and help developers focus on the important things like delivering features faster. We are on a mission to be the reliable foundation of every developer's toolbox, and are building the team that will make that happen.
Our values guide us —they are present in how we show up, make decisions, and work together to make an impact. We're curious, driven, collaborative, genuine and humble.
Temporal is growing and we are looking for those who share our values, challenge 'standard' thinking, and want to influence our future. If you have a passion for improving the developer experience, building world\-class open\-source software and communities, and want to be a part of our amazing team, we'd love to hear from you!
### About Us
Temporal is an open source programming model that can simplify code, make applications more reliable, and help developers focus on the important things like delivering features faster. We are on a mission to be the reliable foundation of every developer's toolbox, and are building the team that will make that happen.
Our values guide us—they are present in how we show up, make decisions, and work together to make an impact. We're curious, driven, collaborative, genuine and humble.
Temporal is growing and we are looking for those who share our values, challenge 'standard' thinking, and want to influence our future. If you have a passion for improving the developer experience, building world\-class open\-source software and communities, and want to be a part of our amazing team, we'd love to hear from you!
Summary
We have an opening to hire a Staff Software Engineer \- Agent Optimization
Temporal provides a reliable foundation powering AI leaders such as OpenAI, NVIDIA, Cursor, Lovable, Replit, and others. Its adoption is expanding to users spanning a broad range of AI applications ranging from agents to data pipelines and everything in between.
The mission of the AI Foundations team is to accelerate Temporal adoption across the entire ecosystem. Our approach combines a deep understanding of use cases with rigorous application of computer systems and software design principles.
In this role, you will lead our agent optimization efforts. You will design tools and mechanisms to help Temporal users build agents that are optimized for token spend and response time while maintaining result quality. Model routing is a first step, but represents the tip of the iceberg of techniques that we can apply. For example, multi\-agent architecture, cache policy, and context management are all relevant. Candidates for this role should have direct experience with this problem domain.
You will work closely with other AI Foundations team members, e.g., those who focus on agentic development, maintaining a set of agents skills that lift performance of Codex, Claude Code, and similar tools for developers of Temporal applications. Other team members build ecosystem integrations or develop policy and security systems.
If you thrive on blending theory and practice, then this is the right team for you. We are an action\-oriented group that loves to ship fast and solve customer problems. We also seek thorough technical grounding for our work and invest in systems and practices that foster long\-term success.
Most of Temporal's work is open source—see for yourself here: https://github.com/temporalio \[new window]
What You Will Do
- Work as a software engineer
- Maintain and expand a deep understanding of agentic coding
- Design and build agentic coding systems that we can trust to deliver high\-quality outputs
- Develop a deep understanding of AI application development patterns and techniques, including emerging approaches and architectures.
- Take end\-to\-end ownership of new features, working with other teams to deliver exceptional reliability and a great developer experience.
- Work with multiple programming languages: Python and TypeScript, Java, Go.
- Serve as a domain expert on AI design patterns, collaborating with field staff to provide best\-practices and canonical examples.
- Work directly with our developer community to debug issues that need expert attention and get feedback on Temporal features and APIs.
- Write public technical documentation describing Temporal concepts and APIs.
- Go the extra mile to support a customer in need, on the rare occasion that our teams' engineering expertise is needed.
- Travel to meet your coworkers for a week once or twice a year.
- Attend the occasional developer conference to talk about how great Temporal is (optional).
What You Won't Do
- Work as a Data Scientist, Data Analyst, Devops SWE, or SRE.
- Work in an office (unless you want to, but you'd be by yourself). Temporal is a fully\-remote company.
- Commit code that's poorly\-tested or works "most of the time". Temporal aspires to be "Reliable as Gravity", and we expect our code to be the same.
- Work behind closed doors. Our work is open source—that means PRs and comments are open to the public, too.
- Sit in meetings all day. We mostly communicate in writing, and use meetings mainly for status updates and thorny issues that need input from the whole group.
- Wake up to pager alerts. We're extremely active in supporting our customers and the community, but we don't do 24/7 on\-call.
What You'll Bring
- 8\+ years of professional work experience.
- Proven experience in optimizing AI systems using both machine learning and systems techniques
- Experience and passion for harnessing generative AI, particularly for agents and coding.
- A deep appreciation for how to use AI to improve quality, not only to increase quantity.
- A sense of taste in code and software development practice. Your approach should be opinionated and thoughtful, but not dogmatic.
- Fluency in multiple programming languages, and an affinity for learning new ones.
- Deep experience with concurrent programming—you should know how to use mutexes, atomics, and other concurrency primitives safely.
- Experience designing APIs and writing documentation for publicly\-available libraries or modules.
- Strong technical communication skills—written and verbal—in English.
- BS or MS in Computer Science (or a closely\-related degree), or equivalent work experience writing production\-grade software.
Nice to Have
- Familiarity with Temporal's programming model (e.g. you've written an app on Temporal).
- A track record of open source software contributions, including contributions to 3rd party libraries.
- Experience contributing to the architecture and design of large\-scale distributed systems.
- Deep background in machine learning, model training, data science, or machine learning systems.
- Graduate degree in Computer Science.
#### Compensation
- The estimated pay range for this role is $224,000 \- $302,400
- Additionally, this role is eligible to participate in Temporal's equity plan.
*Compensation ranges reflect salary and commission compensation (when applicable) across several geographic markets. Employment offers carefully consider multiple factors, including prior experience, knowledge, expertise, skillset, market location, and job level assessed during the interview process.*
*Employee benefits and perks below are for full\-time employees, part\-time or temporary positions are excluded.*
U.S. Benefits
- Unlimited PTO, 12 Holidays \+ 2 Floating Holidays
- 100% Premiums Coverage for Medical, Dental, and Vision
- AD\&D, LT \& ST Disability, and Life Insurance (Standard \& Supplemental Available)
- Empower 401K Plan
- Additional Perks for Learning \& Development, Lifestyle Spending, Home Office Setup, Professional Memberships, WFH Meals, Internet Stipend and more!
International Benefits
Paid Time Off (PTO) and Benefits outside the United States vary by country, and are issued in partnership with Remote.com. Additionally, Temporal offers perks to all international employees for learning \& career development, a lifestyle spending account, home office setup, professional memberships, work\-from\-home meals, and access to the Calm app for mental wellness.
Travel
Temporal is a globally distributed, collaborative team that values opportunities for in\-person connection. Occasional travel may be required for company events, team offsites, and other meaningful moments that bring us together.
*Temporal Technologies is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Temporal Technologies does not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, non\-disqualifying physical or mental disability, national origin, veteran status, or any other basis covered by appropriate law. All employment is decided on the basis of qualifications, merit, and business need. We embrace and celebrate differences and diversity.*
*Temporal is committed to providing access, equal opportunity, and reasonable accommodation for individuals with disabilities in employment, its services, programs, and activities. If you need to request a reasonable accommodation, please let your Recruiter know so we can assist.*
*We are not working with external recruitment agencies, thanks.*
Salary Context
This $224K-$302K range is above the 75th percentile for AI Agent Developer roles in our dataset (median: $200K across 33 roles with salary data).
View full AI Agent Developer salary data →Role Details
About This Role
AI Agent Developers build autonomous systems that can reason, plan, and take actions. They design multi-step workflows, tool-use frameworks, and orchestration layers that let LLMs interact with external systems. This is the frontier of applied AI engineering.
Agent development is where the most interesting (and hardest) problems in applied AI live right now. Making an LLM answer a question is straightforward. Making it reliably execute a 15-step workflow that involves calling APIs, reading databases, making decisions, and recovering from errors is an unsolved problem. You're building systems that have to work despite the fact that the underlying model is non-deterministic.
Across the 4,317 AI roles we're tracking, AI Agent Developer positions make up 1% of the market. At Temporal Technologies, this role fits into their broader AI and engineering organization.
AI Agent Developer is one of the newest and fastest-growing AI role categories. The market is early but accelerating as companies move beyond simple chatbots toward AI systems that can take real actions. Compensation is high because the skill set is rare and the business impact is potentially enormous.
What the Work Looks Like
A typical week includes: designing the action space and tool definitions for a new agent use case, debugging why the agent chose the wrong action sequence on a specific input, building evaluation frameworks that test agent reliability across hundreds of scenarios, optimizing the prompt chain for cost and latency, and implementing safety guardrails to prevent the agent from taking destructive actions. The work is equal parts engineering and empirical science.
AI Agent Developer is one of the newest and fastest-growing AI role categories. The market is early but accelerating as companies move beyond simple chatbots toward AI systems that can take real actions. Compensation is high because the skill set is rare and the business impact is potentially enormous.
Skills Required
Deep experience with LLM APIs and agent frameworks (LangChain, CrewAI, AutoGen). Strong understanding of prompt engineering, function calling, and error handling for non-deterministic systems. Python is standard. Experience with orchestration patterns, state management, and workflow engines adds significant value.
The best agent developers think like systems engineers. They design for failure modes, build observability into every step, and understand that agent reliability is the product. Expertise in evaluation methodology for non-deterministic systems is the differentiator. Can you measure whether your agent works 'well enough'? Can you find the edge cases where it breaks?
Look for roles that describe specific agent use cases, mention evaluation methodology, and talk about production deployment. Early-stage companies exploring agents can be exciting, but be prepared for ambiguity. The most valuable roles are at companies that have already shipped a v1 and need to make it reliable.
Compensation Benchmarks
AI Agent Developer roles pay a median of $240,000 based on 96 positions with disclosed compensation. Senior-level AI roles across all categories have a median of $227,400. This role's midpoint ($263K) sits 10% above the category median. Disclosed range: $224K to $302K.
Across all AI roles, the market median is $215,000. Top-quartile compensation starts at $266,300. The 90th percentile reaches $320,790. For comparison, the highest-paying categories include AI Safety ($287,500) and Research Engineer ($272,100). By seniority level: Entry: $110,000; Mid: $194,400; Senior: $227,400; Director: $274,554; VP: $241,000.
Temporal Technologies AI Hiring
Temporal Technologies has 1 open AI role right now. They're hiring across AI Agent Developer. Based in Remote, US. Compensation range: $302K - $302K.
Remote Work Context
Remote AI roles pay a median of $180,000 across 1,196 positions. About 15% of all AI roles offer remote work.
Career Path
Common paths into AI Agent Developer roles include Software Engineer, LLM Engineer, Prompt Engineer.
From here, career progression typically leads toward AI Architect, Principal Engineer, Head of AI Engineering.
Build agents. That's the portfolio. Take an open-source agent framework, build something that completes a non-trivial multi-step task, evaluate it rigorously, and document what you learned about reliability, cost, and failure modes. The field is new enough that practical experience counts for more than credentials.
What to Expect in Interviews
Interviews focus on systems thinking and reliability engineering. Expect questions about agent architecture: how you'd design a multi-step workflow with error recovery, how you'd evaluate agent performance, and how you'd prevent agents from taking destructive actions. Coding exercises often involve building a simple agent with tool use and evaluating its behavior across different scenarios. Discussion of safety and guardrails is increasingly common.
When evaluating opportunities: Look for roles that describe specific agent use cases, mention evaluation methodology, and talk about production deployment. Early-stage companies exploring agents can be exciting, but be prepared for ambiguity. The most valuable roles are at companies that have already shipped a v1 and need to make it reliable.
AI Hiring Overview
The AI job market has 4,317 open positions tracked in our dataset. By seniority: 138 entry-level, 2,071 mid-level, 1,655 senior, and 453 leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level). Remote roles make up 15% of the market (635 positions). The remaining 3,657 roles require on-site or hybrid attendance.
The market median for AI roles is $215,000. Top-quartile compensation starts at $266,300. The 90th percentile reaches $320,790. Highest-paying categories: AI Safety ($287,500 median, 34 roles); Research Engineer ($272,100 median, 227 roles); AI Engineering Manager ($244,000 median, 23 roles).
AI Agent Developer is one of the newest and fastest-growing AI role categories. The market is early but accelerating as companies move beyond simple chatbots toward AI systems that can take real actions. Compensation is high because the skill set is rare and the business impact is potentially enormous.
The AI Job Market Today
The AI job market spans 4,317 open positions across 15 role categories. The largest categories by volume: AI/ML Engineer (3,004), Data Scientist (345), AI Software Engineer (309). These three account for the majority of open positions, though smaller categories often have higher per-role compensation because of specialized skill requirements.
The seniority mix tells a story about where AI teams are in their maturity. Entry-level roles (138) are outnumbered by mid-level (2,071) and senior (1,655) positions, reflecting that most companies are past the 'build a team from scratch' phase and need experienced engineers who can ship production systems. Leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level) total 453 positions, representing the bottleneck between technical execution and organizational strategy.
Remote work availability sits at 15% of all AI roles (635 positions), with 3,657 requiring on-site or hybrid attendance. The remote share has stabilized after the post-pandemic correction. Senior and specialized roles (Research Scientist, ML Architect) are more likely to be remote-eligible than entry-level positions, partly because experienced hires have more negotiating power and partly because these roles require less hands-on mentorship.
AI compensation is structured in clear tiers. The market median sits at $215,000. Top-quartile roles start at $266,300, and the 90th percentile reaches $320,790. These figures include base salary with disclosed compensation. Total compensation (including equity, bonuses, and sign-on) runs 20-40% higher at companies that offer those components.
Category matters for compensation. AI Safety roles lead at $287,500 median, while Prompt Engineer roles sit at $145,000. The spread between highest and lowest-paying categories reflects the premium on specialized technical skills versus broader analytical roles.
The most in-demand skills across all AI postings: Python (2,249 postings), Aws (1,224 postings), Azure (938 postings), Rag (915 postings), Gcp (660 postings), Pytorch (640 postings), Prompt Engineering (624 postings), Kubernetes (559 postings). Python dominates, appearing in the vast majority of role descriptions regardless of category. Cloud platform experience (AWS, GCP, Azure) is the second most common requirement. The newer entrants to the top skills list (RAG, vector databases, LLM APIs) reflect the shift from traditional ML toward generative AI applications.
Frequently Asked Questions
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