Staff AI Engineer

Redefine the future of customer experiences. One conversation at a time. At Nextiva, we're reimagining how businesses connect, bringing together customer experience and team collaboration on a single, conversation centric platform. Powered by AI, driven by human innovation. Our culture is forward thinking, customer obsessed and built on the belief that meaningful connections drive better business outcomes. Whether it's through our signature Amazing Service®, the technology we create, or the experiences we cultivate, connection is at the core of who we are. If you're ready to collaborate with incredible people, make an impact, and help businesses everywhere deliver truly amazing experiences, this is where you belong. Location: While this role is open to remote candidates across the United States, team members located within 40 miles of our Scottsdale headquarters (9451 E. Via de Ventura, Scottsdale, AZ 85256) are expected to work onsite four days per week to support collaboration, speed, and execution. Specific scheduling and flexibility will be guided by your leader to support both team collaboration and individual productivity. We are seeking a Staff AI Engineer to help accelerate new AI initiatives and support Nextiva's mission of delivering exceptional customer experiences through a unified, modern platform powered by AI and automation. The Staff AI Engineer is a hands-on individual contributor role for an experienced engineer with deep technical expertise in Python, distributed systems, and system design. This role will help design, build, and launch new AI-focused initiatives while working across Nextiva engineering teams and with external technology partners. As a Staff Engineer, you will operate at the intersection of hands-on engineering, system design, and early-stage solutioning. You will take ownership of new capabilities from initial technical discussions through design, development, and launch. This is not an architecture-only position; we are looking for someone who remains close to the code and is comfortable building alongside the team. You will work on initiatives involving NextIQ capabilities, including collaboration with the Google Gemini team to bring capabilities built within Nextiva into partner environments. You will also work closely with global Nextiva product and engineering teams, including teams working on NextOS, to extend NextIQ capabilities across the Nextiva ecosystem. This role is ideal for an engineer who enjoys solving ambiguous problems, building new capabilities from the ground up, and taking end-to-end technical ownership while contributing as a deeply hands-on individual contributor. Responsibilities • Design, build, and launch new AI-focused engineering capabilities and modules. • Own engineering initiatives end to end, from early-stage solutioning and architecture through implementation and launch. • Remain deeply hands-on with software development and contribute production code. • Build solutions using Python and apply strong distributed-systems engineering principles. • Participate in system design, architecture, and solutioning discussions with engineering teams. • Work closely with the Google Gemini team on initiatives designed to bring NextIQ capabilities into Gemini. • Collaborate with other external technology partners to extend Nextiva capabilities into their environments. • Partner with U.S.-based Nextiva product and engineering teams on new initiatives. • Work with teams supporting NextOS to help bring NextIQ capabilities into other areas of the Nextiva ecosystem. • Navigate ambiguous, early-stage technical problems and translate them into practical engineering solutions. • Take accountability for designing, building, and successfully launching the capabilities you own. Requirements Basic Qualifications • 7–10+ years of relevant software engineering experience, with strong hands-on experience building and delivering production software. • Very strong hands-on Python engineering skills. • Strong system design capabilities. • Experience designing and building distributed systems. • Demonstrated experience owning and launching software modules or capabilities end to end. • Experience taking technical initiatives from solutioning and design through development and launch. • Ability and willingness to remain hands-on with coding at Staff Engineer level. • Experience contributing to architecture and technical solutioning discussions. • Ability to work effectively on new initiatives where requirements and technical approaches may still be evolving. • Ability to collaborate effectively with internal engineering teams and external technology partners. • Ability to work remotely within a time zone reasonably aligned with the Arizona-based team. Preferred Qualifications • Experience operating as a Staff Engineer or at a comparable level in a similarly sized or slightly larger organization. • Experience building new products, modules