History Factory · 1 month ago
Staff Engineer (AI & Automation)
Washington, DC
Full-time
Hybrid
Senior Level, Lead/Staff
4+ years expHistory Factory is a company that leverages the intersection of business and history to enhance organizational performance. They are seeking a product-minded Staff Engineer with AI experience to design, build, and maintain applications that improve operational efficiency. The role involves collaborating with various teams to implement AI solutions and streamline workflows.
Product DesignWeb Design
Responsibilities
Build and maintain production web applications using Node.js, Next.js / React / Vite, Laravel, and Python (services, APIs, and CLIs)
Design and implement AI-powered features (generation, classification, extraction, RAG/embeddings) using frontier models such as OpenAI GPT-5 or Google Gemini
Create durable workflow automations with Zapier (webhooks, code steps, branching, error handling) to reduce manual processes
Develop internal scripts to streamline data operations (ETL, file processing, metadata tagging, batch transforms)
Partner with Creative, Archivist, and Content Development teams to map current processes and pilot AI-powered improvements (prompt libraries, Gemini CLI/NotebookLM workbooks, retrieval templates, and Zapier automations); provide lightweight training
Apply secure coding practices and guardrails: parameterized queries/ORM to prevent SQL injection, input validation/encoding to mitigate XSS/CSRF, SSRF protections, least-privilege access, and secrets management
Implement prompt- and injection-safety strategies for LLM features (context scoping, output validation, tool/Function Calling allowlists, rate/cost limits)
Integrate with identity and external systems (OAuth/OIDC; Google/Microsoft; SaaS APIs) and document interfaces with OpenAPI/Swagger
Instrument systems for reliability (logging, metrics, tracing), add tests (unit/integration), and maintain CI/CD checks
Collaborate with cross-functional partners (Product, Marketing, Operations) to translate ambiguous needs into shippable solutions with measurable impact
Produce clear documentation (READMEs, runbooks, postmortems) and contribute to coding standards and reusable components
Qualification
Required
4+ years building web applications with Node.js/React/Next.js and internal tools using Python (or equivalent experience)
Demonstrated experience shipping features with AI platforms like OpenAI, Claude, or Google Gemini APIs (chat/tools/function-calling, embeddings)
Hands-on Zapier automation experience (webhooks, code steps, paths; robust retry/error handling)
Strong grounding in secure software practices (OWASP Top 10/ASVS), API design, and relational data modeling (e.g., MySQL / PostgreSQL)
Proficiency with modern tooling: Git/GitHub, CI/CD, containerization (Docker), testing frameworks (e.g., Vitest/Pytest)
Comfort using AI coding assistants (e.g., Codex CLI, Claude Code) responsibly to augment—not replace—engineering rigor
Excellent communication, documentation, and stakeholder collaboration skills
Preferred
Creative problem-solving: ability to decompose complex, ambiguous issues, learn unfamiliar domains quickly, and deliver working solutions without perfect information
Experience coaching non-technical stakeholders on prompt engineering and safe AI usage; hands-on with tools like Claude Code or Gemini CLI/NotebookLM to operationalize team workflows
Experience with RAG patterns and vector stores (e.g., pgvector, Pinecone), prompt evaluation, and guardrail frameworks
Familiarity with Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is a plus
Serverless/edge deployments (e.g., AWS Lambda, Google Cloud Functions) and background jobs/queues
Company
History Factory
History Factory works with the world’s best companies to use their history and heritage to drive measurable business results.
11-50 employees
Funding
Current Stage
Early StageLeadership Team
Bruce Weindruch
Founder
Company data provided by crunchbase