Southwest Airlines
Technology
SrSoftwareEngineer–AIOps
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“Sr Software Engineer – AI Ops at Southwest Airlines. Skills: AI Platform Operations, Cloud-native services, Observability, SRE practices, Production support, Software engineering. Ensuring AI and agentic applications run reliably, securely, and at scale. Owning L2/L3 production support for cloud-native and AI-enabled services”
What You'll Achieve.
Ensuring AI and agentic applications run reliably, securely, and at scale; Driving permanent improvements that reduce repeat incidents over time; Deliver durable fixes; Improve stability, performance, and service levels; Help ensure Southwest’s AI platforms continue to deliver value as they grow and evolve
Industry & Context.
Proactively shares knowledge and skills of software development and testing to solve a range of problems; Debugging, observability, and SRE practices to quickly diagnose issues and deliver durable fixes
Ability to work extended hours as needed
What They're Looking For.
Must Have
Advanced knowledge of software development methodologies, practices, concepts, and technologies, Advanced knowledge of at least one required programming language, Ability to articulate (verbally / visually) ideas, approach, concepts, options, risk, impact, and provides guidance to technical, non-technical, and Leadership audiences, Ability to lead multiple assignments, whether administrative or project related, while maintaining a successful level of completion in all responsible work, Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems or related field and/or equivalent formal training, 5-7 years of relevant work-related experience, 5+ years in Production support / SRE for cloud or AI/ML applications, 4+ years using Python or Java—debugging, profiling, fixing production issues, 3+ years in Cloud-native AWS—Lambda, ECS/EKS, API Gateway, DynamoDB, S3, 3+ years in Observability—Datadog/CloudWatch/OTel, log/metric/trace analysis, 3+ years in CI/CD, IaC basics (Terraform), and SRE practices—SLOs, error budgets, Must meet confidentiality expectations as to confidential, proprietary and sensitive Company information, Ability to work extended hours as needed
Nice to Have
FinOps for AI inference (cost-per-call, token economics), Eval frameworks (Ragas, DeepEval, Promptfoo) for AI features, Back-office workflow automation experience, Hands-on with agentic frameworks (LangChain/LangGraph/CrewAI) in support context, Docker + Kubernetes for AI workloads
What You'll Do.
Ensuring AI and agentic applications run reliably
Owning L2/L3 production support for cloud-native and AI-enabled services
Driving permanent improvements that reduce repeat incidents over time
and operating highly reliable software systems
and SRE practices to quickly diagnose issues and deliver durable fixes
Evolving platform capabilities through enhancements that improve stability
Mentoring other Engineers
Promoting “shift-left” quality by strengthening testing
and operational readiness
Drive the technical direction and feature roadmap of large-scale cloud systems
Serve as a technical lead contributing to and directing the efforts of development teams
including internal and external team members
Determines operational feasibility by evaluating analysis
and proposed solutions
Drives detailed definition of feature requirements through discussions with product managers and customers
Supports continuous improvement by investigating alternatives and new technologies
Prepares and installs solutions by determining and designing system specifications
Evaluates code to ensure that it is valid
is properly structured
meets industry standards
and is compatible with browsers
Update job knowledge by studying state-of-the-art development tools
programming techniques and computing participating in educational reading professional maintaining personal participating in professional organizations
How You'll Work.
Team & Collaboration
Serve as a technical lead contributing to and directing the efforts of development teams, including internal and external team members; Excellent partnering, communication, negotiation skills, and execution in working with various Technology or partner Teams; Ability to lead ideating, presentations, mentoring and group-thinking sessions
Communication Scope
Excellent partnering, communication, negotiation skills, and execution in working with various Technology or partner Teams; Ability to articulate (verbally / visually) ideas, approach, concepts, options, risk, impact, and provides guidance to technical, non-technical, and Leadership audiences
Process & Methodology
Ability to lead multiple assignments, whether administrative or project related, while maintaining a successful level of completion in all responsible work
Full Job Description
**Department:** Technology **Our Company Promise** We are committed to provide our Employees a stable work environment with equal opportunity for learning and personal growth. Creativity and innovation are encouraged for improving the effectiveness of Southwest Airlines. Above all, Employees will be provided the same concern, respect, and caring attitude within the organization that they are expected to share externally with every Southwest Customer. **Job Description:** As a Sr Software Engineer Global supporting Southwest’s AI Platform Operations Pod, you’ll play a critical role in ensuring AI and agentic applications run reliably, securely, and at scale. This role blends deep hands‑on engineering with technical leadership—owning L2/L3 production support for cloud‑native and AI‑enabled services while driving permanent improvements that reduce repeat incidents over time. You’ll design, build, test, and operate highly reliable software systems, applying strong debugging, observability, and SRE practices to quickly diagnose issues and deliver durable fixes. Working deeply with AWS‑native services and modern monitoring and evaluation tools, you’ll help evolve platform capabilities through enhancements that improve stability, performance, and service levels. You’ll also mentor other Engineers and promote “shift‑left” quality by strengthening testing, automation, and operational readiness. This role offers the opportunity to work on real production systems, influence long‑term reliability, and help ensure Southwest’s AI platforms continue to deliver value as they grow and evolve. Responsibilities * Drive the technical direction and feature roadmap of large-scale cloud systems * Serve as a technical lead contributing to and directing the efforts of development teams, including internal and external team members * Determines operational feasibility by evaluating analysis, problem definition, requirements, solution development, and proposed solutions * Drives detailed defi
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