Staff Engineer (AI & Automation)

About History Factory

Since 1979 History Factory has been driven by the pioneering idea of making an organizations history more useful for driving its business. Today many of the worlds best enterprises turn to History Factory for unparalleled expertise at the intersection of business and history. Our unmatched combination of research and insights standard-setting archives management and technology and award-winning creative transforms a companys inventory of experienceits history and heritageinto better performance and results.

Staff Engineer (AI & Automation) Job Summary:

We are seeking a product-minded Staff Engineer with AI experience to design build and maintain production-grade applications and automations that improve operational efficiency across the business. The ideal candidate is fluent across (or other React-based frameworks) Laravel SQL and Python; comfortable orchestrating workflows in Zapier; and experienced in integrating with LLM platforms such as the OpenAI API and Google Gemini API. You will use AI coding assistants (e.g. Codex-CLI Claude Code) responsibly to accelerate delivery while adhering to safe secure engineering practices.

You will also collaborate with Creative Archives and Content Development teams to improve their day-to-day workflows using AI: coaching on prompt design and deploying tools such as Gemini CLI and NotebookLM to standardize document and accelerate their processes. You will have the opportunity to work with other members of the technology team to assist with this process improvement workstream.

You wont always have all the answers (and thats okay); were looking for a creative problem solver who can break down ambiguous challenges explore options quickly and ship pragmatic solutions.

Key Responsibilities:

• Build and maintain production web applications using / 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.

Required Qualifications

• 4 years building web applications with 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 augmentnot replaceengineering rigor.
• Excellent communication documentation and stakeholder collaboration skills.

Preferred Qualifications

• 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.

Location of Employment

Chantilly VA / Washington DC area.

Remote work options are available but on-site collaboration is required. You will be reporting to the Head of Technology Enablement.

Important Note

This full-time role owns the delivery of secure scalable internal tools and client-facing applications. Youll operate in a high-visibility capacity alongside department heads and leadership applying sound engineering judgment and responsible AI to drive measurable efficiency gains. We value curiosity resilience and first-principles thinking: you may not know every answer on day one but you have the mindset and skills to find them fast even under pressure.

EEO and accessibility Statement

History Factory is an equal opportunity employer and makes employment decisions based on business needs job requirements and individual qualifications without regard to race color religion national origin sex (including pregnancy) sexual orientation gender identity or expression marital status age family medical history or genetic information disability past or present military service or any other characteristics protected under the laws applicable in the locations where History Factory operates. History Factory will not tolerate discrimination or harassment based on any of these characteristics.

History Factory is committed to the full inclusion of all individuals. We comply with federal and state disability laws and make reasonable accommodations for applicants and employees with disabilities. To request reasonable accommodation in the job application or interview process please contact