About the Role
The New York Times is hiring a Software Engineer to join the New A.I. Products & Platforms mission. We are a team building the next generation of reader-facing A.I. experiences for one of the world's most trusted news organizations.
We're looking for a prototyper: someone who moves fast, ships real things, and has a genuine instinct for what makes a product feel good. You'll work at the intersection of applied A.I. and consumer product. You'll turn emerging capabilities — language models, content embeddings, semantic search — into features that help Times readers discover, understand, and engage more deeply with our content. You'll be working inside an organization with a strong culture of editorial judgment and independence.
You need a track record of shipping, a strong command of the modern web stack, and real hands-on time building with LLMs in production.
This is a hybrid role based in our New York City headquarters, reporting to the VP of Engineering, New AI Products and Platforms. You can typically expect to come into the office 2+ days per week.
Responsibilities:
- Prototype, iterate, and ship LLM- and embedding-powered reader experiences from early concept through production, in conjunction with other engineers and cross-functional peers
- Build across the full stack: Node.js/TypeScript backends, React frontends, and A.I. integrations connecting them
- Build net-new A.I. features and integrate them into existing Times systems and APIs — knowing when to build from scratch and when to wire things together cleanly
- Write, test, and refine prompts and retrieval pipelines; treat prompt engineering as a first-class engineering discipline
- Instrument your features with evaluations, engagement signals, and performance monitoring, and use them to make things better
- Work closely with product managers, designers, journalists, and senior engineers to translate editorial goals into working product
- Contribute to shared practices around evaluation, responsible A.I. use, and what "good" looks like inside an organization where judgment and independence are taken seriously
- Demonstrate support and understanding of our value of journalistic independence and a strong commitment to our mission to seek the truth and help people understand the world
Basic Qualifications:
- 2+ years of software engineering experience with demonstrated ability to ship consumer-facing features
- Hands-on experience building with Large Language Models in a real product context — not just side projects
- Full-stack fundamentals: Node.js or TypeScript on the backend, React on the front end
- Experience navigating codebases and working within established backend infrastructure
- Proficiency in GenAI‑assisted developer tooling (e.g., Cursor, Copilot, or Claude Code) and passion for improving software delivery by leveraging these tools
Additional Qualifications:
- Experience working across both greenfield product development and integration with legacy or third-party systems
- Additional backend experience in Python, particularly for data pipelines or model integrations
- Experience with semantic search, embedding-based retrieval, or personalization systems
- Experience building agentic software — systems where models plan, take actions, or operate across multiple steps; complexity matters more than tenure
- Familiarity with evaluation frameworks or A/B testing for A.I. features
- Background in product environments where editorial or institutional judgment shapes what you ship
#LI-Hybrid
REQ-019883
The annual base pay range for this role is between:
$104,000 - $130,000 USD
Read Full Description