Tern
Travel
StaffEngineer,R&DAITooling
Neural analysis suggests this role is
optimal for Senior candidates.
“Staff Engineer, R&D AI Tooling at Tern”
What You'll Achieve.
Make people faster; Make people better; Unblock colleagues quickly; Ship value weekly; Compounding habits; Sustainable productivity; Consistency; Mutual trust; Understand users; Understand industry; Challenge trade-offs; Break hard problems; Tackle problems with intention; Say not right now; Speak up; Move forward; Share dissenting views early; Challenge each other; Sweat the details; Relentless progress; Stay aligned; Own outcomes; Elevate the room
Industry & Context.
Troubleshooting
What They're Looking For.
Must Have
Staff or principal background, AI-native company experience, Agentic development fluency, Shipped MCP integrations, Shipped custom agents, Shipped eval frameworks, Shipped codegen pipelines, Write in open on agentic patterns, Build in open on agentic patterns, Write in open on MCP, Build in open on MCP, Write in open on evals, Build in open on evals, Write in open on codegen, Build in open on codegen, Current individual shipping record
Nice to Have
Used every piece of stack
How You'll Work.
Team & Collaboration
Engineering pair; Code reviews; Design reviews; Cross-functional teams
Communication Scope
Written work
Full Job Description
Every engineer at Tern builds with AI. AI adoption and fluency is demanded, and is world class across the entire org. If you'd rather design from a distance, or build ahead of everyone in isolation rather than teach and pair, this isn't the right fit. If you're the person who has been the top 1% on agentic workflows for a while and you're hungry to build the team around you into something genuinely exceptional at this, we want to talk. ABOUT TERN Tern is a venture-backed software company on a mission to reshape the $127B travel agency industry by giving power back to the entrepreneurs who built it. Nearly 98% of travel agencies are small businesses. These businesses have been chronically underserved by technology. We're here to change that. Our platform helps travel advisors run more efficient, professional, and profitable operations, giving them the modern infrastructure they need to lead the next chapter of travel. But the impact goes beyond business. Travel advisors help clients move more intentionally through the world. When a traveler works with an advisor, they're more likely to avoid overtouristed hotspots and more likely to spend their dollars in places where they can do real good. That's the kind of travel we want more of. At Tern, we believe in small business. We believe in the power of travel. And we're building the future of both. STAFF ENGINEER, R&D AI TOOLING Every team at Tern is an AI team. We run Claude Code with a deep library of custom skills and agents, unlimited token usage, and we're actively building agentic and MCP, based tooling on top of our own systems. It's working. This role is the person who pushes it dramatically further. We're looking for a staff, level engineer who is demonstrably ahead of most teams on agentic development, not in theory, in production. You'll ship real engineering work in the main codebase every week, and from inside that work, build the tooling and workflows that make the entire team faster. The direction you set c
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