Staff AI Engineer New

What We're Building

Honeycomb is a service for the near and present future, defining observability and raising expectations of what developer tools can do We're working with well known companies like HelloFresh, Slack, LaunchDarkly, and Vanguard and more across a range of industries. This is an exciting time in our trajectory, we've closed Series D funding, scaled past the 200-person mark, and were named to Forbes' America's Best Startups of 2022 and 2023

If you want to see what we've been up to, please check out these blog posts and press releases.

Who We Are

We come for the impact, and stay for the culture We're a talented, opinionated, passionate, fiercely inclusive, and responsible group of bees. We have conviction and we strive to live our values every day. We want our people to do what they truly love amongst a team of highly talented (but humble) peers.

How We Work

We are a fully distributed company, which means we believe it is not where you sit, but how you deliver that matters most. We invest in our people and care about how you orient to our culture and processes. At the same time we imbue a lot of trust, autonomy, and accountability from Day 1. #LI-Remote

2026: The Year of AI at Honeycomb

We're scaling our dedicated AI Team—a group of builders shaping the future of developer tools with AI at the core. This isn't just about building cool demos—it's about shipping reliable, innovative AI-powered features that make our users faster, smarter, and more effective. As a Staff AI Engineer, you'll lead high-impact projects, mentor teammates, and help define what great AI at Honeycomb looks like.

We've already shipped major AI capabilities like an AI-guided workspace to query your Honeycomb data, Natural Language Querying, and an MCP server, and shared our learnings along the way in posts like So we shipped an AI Product, did it work?. Now we're investing even more deeply. Want to help write the next chapter?

A little more about the team:

The AI team is dedicated to building user-facing AI features that transform how engineers explore and understand their software systems. Along with the rest of the team's triad, you'll help lead a cross-functional team reshaping Honeycomb into an AI-native platform for observability. If you're excited about owning high-impact, greenfield projects and helping define what "great AI" looks like in production, we'd love to meet you.

What you'll do in the role:

• Own end-to-end implementation of AI-powered product features, from prototypes to production. Mentor other engineers on the team, leveling up the team as a whole. Collaborate across the organization to support shipping these features to production.
• Handle prompt engineering, model tuning, and evaluation strategies to improve reliability and UX.
• Collaborate with product and design partners in defining and scoping AI-driven experiences.
• Teach best practices for working with LLMs, including prompt design and evaluation methodologies.
• Learn deeply about Honeycomb's workflows and user problems to build truly helpful AI features.
• Iterate through fast feedback loops, experimentation, and sharing both wins and failures.

What you'll bring to the role:

• Ideally 7+ years of software engineering experience, with 3+ years building ML/AI-powered features in production.
• Proven experience shipping production AI/GenAI features end-to-end.
• Strong background as a Staff-level product software engineer (not data science or ML-research-only).
• Experience iteratively improving GenAI-powered features based on quantitative and qualitative signals.
• Ability to design, run, and evaluate experiments for AI features.
• Prior on-call experience supporting production systems.
• Deep expertise in LLMs, prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation, and evaluation methods.
• Proficiency in backend development using Python, Go, Ruby, TypeScript or a similar language.
• Strong cross-functional skills and a track record of collaborating closely with PMs and designers.
• Comfort navigating ambiguity and driving clarity in fast-paced environments.
• Bonus: Experience with observability tools, production infrastructure, or public contributions to the AI community.

Your recruiter will ask you for feedback on our range and your compensation expectations in the first call.

Base Salary based on level of experience

$259,300 - $305,000 USD

What you'll get when you join the Hive:

• A stake in our success - generous equity with employee-friendly stock program
• It's not about how strong of a negotiator you are - our pay is based on transparent levels relative to experience
• Time to recharge - Unlimited PTO and paid sabbatical
• A remote-first mindset and culture (really)
• Home office, co-working, and internet stipend
• Full benefits coverage for employees, with additional coverage available for dependents
• Up to 16 weeks of paid parental leave, regardless of path to parenthood
• Annual development allowance
• And much more...

Please note we cannot currently sponsor or support visa transfers at this time. Additionally, in compliance with applicable law, all persons hired will be required to verify identity and eligibility to work.

Phishing and Recruitment Scam Warning:

We take your security seriously. Please be aware that recruitment scams are increasingly common and scammers may create email addresses or websites to impersonate Honeycomb employees. To help protect you:

• All communications will come from an email address
• We occasionally work with external recruiting agencies. These partners will use legitimate business email addresses—never personal accounts like Gmail or Yahoo.
• Our recruiting process will never ask you to provide financial or sensitive personal information, including but not limited to:
• Social security or tax identification numbers
• Credit card numbers