Senior Software Engineer, Applied AI

Description

The Cato Institute seeks qualified candidates for the Senior Software Engineer, Applied AI position. Cato is building two technology platforms in parallel, a React-powered Next.js content platform and a Python research and operations platform, and both need an engineer who can move between them. Features, infrastructure, testing, AI integration: The work goes where the need is.

That cross-platform expectation is practical: Cato’s development environments run on AI agent orchestration with structured reasoning frameworks, automated quality enforcement, and strict type systems that catch mistakes before the engineer does. The role does not require years of experience in both TypeScript and Python. It requires strong engineering fundamentals and comfort working inside an AI-empowered development loop, as well as building and improving the agent skills undergirding it.

The Senior Software Engineer joins a small, technically ambitious team working at the intersection of policy scholarship with modern software engineering and AI-integrated workflows.

The projected salary range for this role is $100,000 - $190,000 per year. Compensation is based on the successful candidate's educational background, experience, and skills.

About Cato

The Cato Institute is a public policy research organization — a think tank — dedicated to the principles of individual liberty, limited government, free markets, and peace. Its scholars and analysts conduct independent, nonpartisan research on a wide range of policy issues.

Founded in 1977, Cato owes its name to Cato’s Letters, a series of essays published in 18th-century England that presented a vision of a society free from excessive government power. Those essays inspired the architects of the American Revolution. And the simple, timeless principles of that revolution — individual liberty, limited government, and free markets — turn out to be even more powerful in today’s world of global markets and unprecedented access to information than Jefferson or Madison could have imagined. Social and economic freedom is not just the best policy for a free people, it is the indispensable framework for the future.

Cato Institute is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

Responsibilities

Build and maintain sophisticated agent skills and agentic tooling that integrate AI across engineering and operational workflows

Integrate AI content retrieval systems, such as Sanity’s Agent Context, into production workflows

Build services (e.g., API and MCP endpoints) that surface Cato’s 50 years of policy research for diverse consuming applications

Build and extend features, components, and shared packages across both the TypeScript / React content platform and the Python research and operations platform

Extend and harden core infrastructure packages across both platforms: API client integration, streaming data pipelines, document processing, and structured logging

Maintain testing infrastructure across both platforms, closing coverage gaps and integrating tests into continuous integration workflows

Likely Initial Focus Areas (First 6 - 12 Months)

Contribute to the content platform’s march toward production, picking up feature work, migration tasks, and building pipeline improvements

Develop familiarity with both codebases through Cato’s AI development infrastructure — project instruction files, quality enforcement hooks, and structured reasoning frameworks that provide persistent architectural context and catch errors in real time

Build out test suites for both platforms, prioritizing high-dependency packages and critical paths

Requirements

Education and Experience

Bachelor’s degree in any field

5+ years of professional software engineering experience, including work on production systems

Expertise with multiple major LLMs: Claude, ChatGPT, and/or Gemini

Expertise with agentic AI development tools (Claude Code, Codex, or similar), including authoring reusable agent capabilities — agent skills, structured workflows, and tool integrations — not just using them

Proficiency in TypeScript / React or Python, with demonstrated ability to work productively in languages and frameworks outside your primary expertise

Experience building or integrating LLM-enabled systems — prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation, tool use, or evaluation pipelines

Knowledge and Skills

Strong software engineering fundamentals: testing, version control, CI/CD, code review, and systems design

Comfort working across the stack — backend services, frontend components, data pipelines, and build infrastructure

Clear written and verbal communication; ability to document systems and explain technical decisions to non-engineers

Self-directed, adaptable, and comfortable with ambiguity in a small team where priorities shift

Familiarity with Cato’s work or demonstrated interest in public policy

Preferred Qualifications

Familiarity with headless CMS platforms, content modeling, or structured content systems

Experience building streaming or pipeline-based data processing systems

Experience with AI output evaluation frameworks or quality benchmarking tools

Experience authoring and maintaining agent skills (such as Claude/Claude Code Skills) or comparable agentic workflow packages

Familiarity with think tank, research, government, or academic technology environments

Benefits

All Cato employees are provided:

Medical, dental, and vision insurance

Employer contribution to a Health Savings Account (HSA)

Generous vacation and sick days

Paid parental leave

Employer-provided life and disability insurance

401(k) employer match

Transit/Parking benefits

Pet discount plan

Applicants must be currently authorized to work in the United States on a full-time basis. This position does not offer visa sponsorship.

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