Staff Software Engineer

For this job, we are currently only hiring candidates based in New York and require on-site work at our New York office three days per week. For more information on where we employ, please see below.

About the Role

Ontra is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to work on our innovative purpose-built AI solutions. Contract negotiations once required hours of manual markup. Hundreds of pages of fund documents hide critical obligations in dense legal language. Unstructured legal text needs to become clean, actionable data before it can drive any real decisions.

At Ontra, that's the work. You'll build AI-powered features that automatically mark up contracts during negotiations, extract obligations buried in complex fund documents, and transform messy legal text into structured data that some of the world's largest investment firms rely on to run their business.

This role is a great opportunity for someone who is passionate about tackling complex technical challenges, architecting robust and scalable systems, and collaborating with cross-functional teams. This position is ideal for those who enjoy driving project direction and fostering an environment of continuous improvement. We're looking for someone who combines deep technical skill with strong product instincts. You'll partner closely with product and design to shape what we build, not just how.

You’ll have hands-on experience building with AI and LLMs in production, and should be able to define evaluation frameworks, reason about failure modes, and make strategic calls about where AI creates genuine value in our products, and where it doesn't.

If you want to do the best work of your career at a company and want to contribute to a culture of learning and growth, we’d love to get to know you!

What You’ll Do

• Build with AI: Ship AI-powered product features and use AI tools across your own workflow, from prototyping to code review.

• Architect and Deliver: Set technical direction across product areas, making architectural decisions that balance near-term shipping with long-term scalability.

• Own Outcomes Across Teams: Identify the highest-leverage problems, ensure the right things get built in the right order, and drive initiatives from ambiguous problem statements through to production.

• Raise the Engineering Bar: Establish patterns, improve tooling, fix systemic quality issues, and use code reviews to level up other engineers.

• Shape Product Direction: Partner with product and design as a technical thought partner. Bring engineering insight into what's possible, what's costly, and where technical investment unlocks new value.

What You’ll Bring

• Expertise: 10+ years in software engineering with a track record of designing and delivering complex, production-grade systems.

• AI Fluency: Daily use of AI coding tools is required, along with the ability to review, verify, and reject AI output and to know when not to trust it. Preferred depth includes having built LLM features in production (RAG, agents, prompting, evals).

• Results-driven approach: Proven experience delivering features and solutions that have a direct impact on revenue growth, savings, or operational efficiencies.

• Problem Solving Skills: Ability to tackle complex technical problems with creativity and efficiency.

• Communication: Excellent verbal and written communication across technical and non-technical team members and stakeholders.

APAC

Hong Kong

EMEA

United Kingdom

Benefits Snapshot

• Twice yearly team offsites for in-person collaboration

• Paid flexible time off policy

• Paid parental leave and benefits

• Employer-supported retirement contributions, varying by country

• Monthly phone and internet reimbursement

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