Rapid Prototyping Engineer (Software)

Mine Vision Systems is a mining technology company building the decision-making platform for underground mining. We introduce high-fidelity data into the mining workflow that has simply never existed before enabling operators to move from assumptions to evidence-based decisions. Our digital infrastructure is designed to map monitor and manage the underground mining environment with confidence creating a persistent data-rich foundation for operational and strategic decision-making. Since the launch of our flagship product FaceCapture in late 2023 adoption has accelerated rapidly as customers realize the value of truly understanding their underground operations.

We focus on underground mining of critical minerals and precious metals where small improvements in accuracy and insight drive outsized returns. Our technology delivers millions of dollars in annual value by minimizing overbreak improving ore calls enhancing resource models and enabling a growing set of high-impact applications across the mine lifecycle. By transforming raw underground data into actionable intelligence Mine Vision Systems empowers mining teams to operate more efficiently more predictably and with greater confidence than ever before.

Role Summary

We are looking for an AI-forward Rapid Prototyping Engineer who can turn an idea into a working customer-facing prototype in days and then turn that prototype into a first-class contribution to our production codebase. You will pair with our product team and sales team and sometimes participate in customer and prospect meetings listening to whats actually being asked for and prototyping it fast with AI as your daily multiplier and you will close the loop by refactoring those experiments into clean maintainable production code that meets our engineering bar. This role is build-heavy customer-facing and AI-forward; it prioritizes real software-engineering depth the judgment to fix what AI subtly gets wrong and the personal range to be comfortable in a sales meeting one day and in a code review the next. The right person treats a prototype as a starting point for production not a separate world and the right person is someone the sales team is glad to bring into a customer room.

Key Responsibilities

• Rapid prototyping with AI: Build working prototypes of customer-requested capabilities in hours-to-days using AI tools as a daily multiplier; iterate fast and validate with real users.
• Customer and sales partnership: Join sales calls and customer prospect meetings as a technical voice listen to the real underlying need demonstrate options live and translate ambiguous customer language into concrete prototypes.
• Cross-functional bridge: Pair with Product to align prototypes with the roadmap; pair with the rest of the software team to land prototypes cleanly in the codebase rather than over the wall.
• Prototype production refactoring: Carry your prototypes into the production codebase with the support of the engineering team; respect existing architecture match the codebases lints types tests and directory conventions and meet the teams quality bar.
• Production code contribution: Contribute regular features and improvements to the production codebase between prototype cycles. This is not a sandbox-only role.
• AI-assisted code authoring with judgment: Read and validate AI-generated code; identify and fix the subtle errors AI gets wrong; treat AI output as a starting point not an answer.
• Live demos: Build demo-quality artifacts that survive scrutiny in a real customer room clean enough to ship real enough to use not slideware.
• Internal sharing and recognition: Document prototypes post short demos in shared channels and propose follow-on work where a prototype clearly hits.

Qualifications

• 3 years of professional software engineering real production code not bootcamp or hobby projects.
• Strong in Python or C ideally both. Rust is a plus. You can read write and refactor in at least one deeply.
• Demonstrable hands-on use of AI tools (Claude Code CLI Codex etc.) as a daily multiplier in your own work. You will be expected to show this directly in the interview process.
• Comfortable reading and refactoring code you didnt write including older code with imperfect documentation.
• Personable and customer-comfortable able to answer a customers technical question on the spot comfortable being respectfully wrong out loud and able to read a room.
• Strong written communication you can summarize what you built and why in a way that can be understood by product sales engineering and customers.
• Bias toward shipping working things vs just talk; bias toward putting prototypes into the real codebase vs rotting in a sandbox.

Desirable

• Background in mining robotics embedded or industrial technology.
• Familiarity with our stack Python and C services web-app frontends AWS and container workflows.
• Prior experience in a Forward Deployed Engineer / Solutions Engineer / Pre-Sales Engineer / customer-embedded role or as a startup founding engineer where customer time and engineering time happened on the same day.

What Success Looks Like

• Speed of what if working artifact. A customer asks for something on Monday; by Wednesday you have a real prototype the sales team can demo.
• Prototypes land in production. The capabilities you prove out cleanly reach the production codebase without a complete rewrite without breaking neighboring features and with the existing teams confidence intact.
• Sales pulls you in voluntarily. Account executives ask for you in customer meetings because you make the room better.
• Youre a credible engineer in code review. Other engineers respect your PRs the same way they would any team members.
• You make AI look good and the team look better. Your visible workflow gives the rest of the team a pattern they want to copy.

Benefits

• We are a fast paced and growing company with real robotic hardware in the field around the world generating actual revenue
• Competitive compensation and full benefits: medical dental vision disability life insurance 401(k) with match
• Uncounted PTO policy and flexible hybrid work model
• Small fast-moving team with hands-on work and immediate impact