---
title: 'Staff Software Engineer, Applied AI at Emergence Capital Partners'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/staff-software-engineer-applied-ai-emergence-capital-partners-san-francisco-cv3xt15gh6c2'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-11'
---

# Staff Software Engineer, Applied AI at Emergence Capital Partners

- **Company:** Emergence Capital Partners
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Posted:** 2025-12-22
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-11
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/emergence-capital-partners/3778d7f9-02e2-4125-a441-02170767877c

## Job description

## About the Role

We're building AI products that solve real problems for real customers. This role sits at the intersection of product and engineering– you'll own features end-to-end, from understanding user problems to shipping production code that scales. Applied AI product engineering is a new discipline. You won't just be integrating APIs – you'll be designing AI systems that work reliably in production, building evaluation frameworks to measure quality, and iterating rapidly based on real user feedback. You'll work directly with customers to understand their workflows and translate that understanding into product decisions. This is not a research role. We're looking for engineers who ship. You'll be measured by the products you deliver and the problems you solve, not by papers published or models trained. The best candidates combine deep technical skills with strong product intuition and a relentless focus on user outcomes.

## What You'll Do

- Design, build, and ship AI-powered product features from concept through production deployment
- Develop and maintain LLM-based systems including RAG pipelines, agents, and workflow automation
- Build evaluation frameworks and monitoring systems to ensure AI quality and reliability
- Work directly with customers to understand problems, gather feedback, and validate solutions
- Collaborate with product and design to define roadmap and prioritize features based on impact
- Optimize system performance, cost, and latency as usage scales
- Contribute to technical architecture decisions and establish engineering best practices

## Qualifications

- 4+ years of software engineering experience, with at least 1-2 years building AI/ML-powered products
- Strong proficiency in Python; experience with TypeScript/JavaScript for full-stack development
- Hands-on experience with LLMs in production: prompt engineering, RAG systems, fine-tuning, or agent frameworks
- Solid understanding of ML fundamentals: embeddings, vector databases, evaluation metrics, and model selection
- Experience building and maintaining production systems with high reliability requirements
- Strong product intuition, ability to translate ambiguous user needs into concrete technical solutions
- Excellent communication skills and comfort working directly with customers and stakeholders
- BS/MS in Computer Science, or equivalent practical experience

## Nice to Have

- Experience with AI infrastructure: LangChain, LlamaIndex, vector databases (Pinecone, Weaviate, Chroma)
- Background in NLP, information retrieval, or search systems
- Previous startup experience, especially as an early engineer or technical co-founder
- Domain expertise in financial services, legal, healthcare, or other enterprise SaaS verticals
- Contributions to open-source AI/ML projects
- Experience building developer tools or platforms

## About Emergence Capital Partners

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Emergence Capital is a venture capital firm that partners with early-stage enterprise SaaS founders to build iconic cloud companies.
- **Entity Type**: Private (venture capital firm)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, USA
- **Founded**: 2003
- **Founders**: Jason Green, Brian Jacobs, Gordon Ritter

## Core Business
- Primary industry: Venture Capital (early-stage enterprise SaaS investment)
- Target customers: B2B enterprise technology startups (founders and management teams)
- Mission or purpose statement: “To help build the next generation of enterprise cloud companies that change the way the world works.” [emcap.com](https://www.emcap.com/thoughts/hiring-for-our-values)

## Products & Services
- **Venture Capital Funding**: Provides early-stage (Series A/B) capital to enterprise SaaS companies; typically invests in 5–7 new companies per year with a high-touch, low-volume approach. [emcap.com](https://www.emcap.com/)
- **Portfolio Support Services**: Offers go-to-market expertise, talent sourcing (via a dedicated job board), and strategic advice through the full company lifecycle. [emcap.com/about](https://www.emcap.com/about)
- **AI-Native Services (AINS) Playbook**: A framework and expertise for investing in “companies that sell outcomes rather than software” – a focus area as AI unlocks new business models. [emcap.com](https://www.emcap.com/)

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly available (VC firm valuation is not disclosed).
- **Key Metrics**: Over $9B in realized returns on less than $2.5B invested. Over 90% of early-stage investments successfully raised follow-on rounds and over 20% later surpassed $1B in valuation. [emcap.com](https://www.emcap.com/)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Founders/Partners include Gordon Ritter, Santi Subotovsky, Jake Saper, Kevin Spain, Yaz El-Baba, and others; the firm has zero partner turnover since founding. [emcap.com/team](https://www.emcap.com/team)
- **Growth Signals**: Raised sixth core fund (ECP VI) and Opportunity Fund I; crossed 100th investment; portfolio includes public companies like Zoom, Doximity, Blend, and notable acquisitions like Chorus and Openpath. [emcap.com](https://www.emcap.com/thoughts/hiring-for-our-values)

## Competitive Advantages
- **Hyper-focused thesis**: Concentrates exclusively on early-stage enterprise SaaS, allowing deep domain expertise and conviction.
- **Long-term, low-turnover partnership**: No partner has ever left the firm, providing consistent mentorship and support across company lifecycles.
- **Exceptional track record**: 1 in 10 early-stage investments have gone public, and 1 in 5 have reached unicorn status.
- **High-touch approach**: Partners make only one investment per year each, enabling deep diligence and hands-on founder support.

## Strategic Focus
- **Leading the AI transformation**: Actively investing in AI infrastructure, physical world AI, and AI-Native Services (AINS) as the next wave of enterprise business models.
- **Staying early and focused**: Maintaining a disciplined, thesis-driven investment strategy while scaling support for portfolio companies.
- **Expanding talent and resources**: Growing the internal team to sustain high-touch partnership and adding new capabilities (e.g., dedicated operating partners).

## Why Work Here
- **Culture of collaboration and long-term thinking**: The firm values “unanimous enthusiasm” on investments and emphasizes integrity, humility, and fairness.
- **Low turnover & internal growth**: Team members are developed into partner roles from within; no GP ever departs.
- **Impact on iconic companies**: Employees contribute to shaping the future of enterprise cloud alongside firms like Zoom, Salesforce, Veeva, and Gusto.
- **Work location**: Likely hybrid/office in San Francisco (not explicitly confirmed). [emcap.com/careers](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/emergence-capital-partners)

## Sources
1. [Emergence Capital Website](https://www.emcap.com/)
2. [About Emergence Capital](https://www.emcap.com/about)
3. [Team Page](https://www.emcap.com/team)
4. [Hiring For Our Values Blog Post](https://www.emcap.com/thoughts/hiring-for-our-values)
5. [Emergence Capital Job Board](https://talent.emcap.com/jobs)

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