MixMode

Sr. Software Engineer-AI Reliability

Remote, United States remote Entry $150,000 - $210,000
remote Technology & IT Salary listed Curated
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About the role

MixMode is a leading provider of AI-powered cybersecurity solutions at scale, pioneering a patented third-wave, context-aware AI approach that automatically learns and adapts to dynamic environments. The MixMode platform delivers self-supervised, real-time threat detection for known and unknown threats across cloud, hybrid, and on-premises environments. Large organizations with big data workloads – including those in enterprise, critical infrastructure, US Department of War and US Intelligence Community – trust MixMode to defend their most important assets. Backed by PSG and Entrada Ventures, MixMode is headquartered in Santa Barbara, California. Learn more at www.mixmode.ai.

Job Summary:
We are hiring a Senior Software Engineer, based in the United States, to enhance the reliability, performance, and scalability of our production AI systems. We value clear thinking, incremental improvement, and engineers with real production incident experience. This role focuses on understanding, refining, and strengthening existing distributed services across application, database, and container orchestration layers. You will collaborate with ML researchers to make our systems more robust, maintainable, flexible, and scalable. This is a remote position but requires the ability to travel to the MixMode headquarters in Santa Barbara for in person meetings a few times a year.
What you’ll be doing (responsibilities):
Own the reliability, performance, and operational health of production AI services
Refactor and harden existing systems to improve resilience, clarity, and maintainability
Diagnose and resolve issues across distributed services, data pipelines, and storage layers
Design and implement monitoring, alerting, and debugging tools for high-availability systems
Partner with researchers and engineers to productionize predictive systems at scale
Establish best practices for testing, deployment, capacity planning, and incident response
Contribute to incident response and postmortems, driving continuous improvement
What you’ll need to bring (qualifications):
Ability to travel to our office in Santa Barbara, CA, a few times per year
7+ years of professional software engineering experience
Strong proficiency in Python and at least one JVM language (Java, Scala, Kotlin)
Proven experience designing, building, and operating distributed systems in production
Strong understanding of service architecture, concurrency, resource management, and distributed failure modes
Experience operating Kubernetes deployments
Strong experience with relational databases, including query performance analysis, indexing, and connection management
Demonstrated ability to diagnose and resolve performance, scalability, and reliability issues across system layers
Experience implementing automated testing and production observability (logging, metrics, tracing)
Experience collaborating with ML or data science teams (deep ML expertise is not required)
Ability to improve system architecture and engineering practices through design, code review, and mentorship
Our Interview Process:
Our interview process focuses on real-world production experience and practical systems thinking. We assess how you reason about distributed systems, refactor existing code, and operate under real constraints—not abstract puzzles. We support the use of AI tools in our development, but we want to understand your capabilities first. No AI tools will be allowed for remote interviews early in the process.
The process includes:
Conversations about systems you’ve personally owned, improved, and operated in production
A live refactoring and testing exercise in your choice of Java, Kotlin, or Scala, centered on improving existing code without changing behavior
A distributed systems discussion covering performance, state management, failure modes, and debugging under load
An ML production discussion focused on stabilizing and operating model-driven systems in real environments
The final stage of our interview process includes an in-person conversation at our Santa Barbara office, focused on senior-level ownership, judgment, and technical leadership
We are open to hiring great talent who may have qualifications above or below those specifically listed in this job description. Pursuant to California law, we must display the pay range for this job. Since we are willing to hire within a broad spectrum of qualifications, we also reflect a broad pay range. The base hourly range that we are targeting for this position is $150,000-$210,000 though we can adjust based on individual qualifications. Individual salary is determined by qualifications, role, level, and location.
Compensation and benefits are competitive based on industry standards. Benefits for full-time team members include:
Remote-First Work Culture
Healthcare (Medical, Dental, Vision, Accident)
Basic & Voluntary Life and AD&D
Flexible Spending Account (FSA)
401(k) with Employer Match
Paid Holidays & Flexible Paid Time Off (PTO)
MixMode provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation and training.
Disability and Reasonable Accommodations | E-Verify | Right to Work
Please note: MixMode does not accept unsolicited resumes from recruiters or employment agencies. In the event of a recruiter or agency submitting a resume or candidate without a signed agreement being in place, we explicitly reserve the right to pursue and hire such candidates without any financial obligation to the recruiter or agency. Any unsolicited resumes, including those submitted directly to hiring managers, are deemed to be the property of MixMode.

Originally posted on Himalayas

Interview prep

Walk in with sharper answers.

Use this as a quick practice sheet before you speak with the employer.

Role
Technology & IT MySQL Python Remote Collaboration Sr. Software remote

Likely questions

  1. Tell us about work you have done that is close to the Sr. Software Engineer-AI Reliability role.
  2. How would you approach your first 30 days at MixMode?
  3. Which of MySQL, Python and Remote Collaboration have you used recently, and what did it help you achieve?
  4. Describe a time you solved a problem without waiting to be told exactly what to do.
  5. How do you stay organised and communicate clearly when working remotely?

Prepare before the call

  • A recent example that proves your experience with MySQL, Python and Remote Collaboration.
  • One short story with a problem, your action, and the result.
  • Two examples that show the strengths listed on your CV.
  • A clear reason why this role and company interest you.
  • Your availability, preferred work style, and salary expectations.

Ask them

  • What would success look like in the first 90 days?
  • What are the main problems this hire should help solve?
  • How does the team give feedback and measure good work?
  • What does a normal working week look like for this role?
Practice line

I am interested in the Sr. Software Engineer-AI Reliability role because I can bring practical experience in MySQL, Python and Remote Collaboration, learn the team quickly, and contribute to the outcomes MixMode needs from this hire.

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