AI Software Engineer
Perth, WA (hybrid) · Full-time, permanent
Help bring useful AI into real businesses, and take a stake in what you build.
Alien Intelligence is an Australian AI engineering company. We design and build AI solutions for businesses across many sectors: helping organisations adopt agentic layers over the systems they already run, building custom models for large enterprises, and delivering practical off-the-shelf solutions for smaller businesses. Our goal is simple and ambitious: to humanise AI and take its useful applications into business across the world.
We are a small, senior, high-trust team that holds its work to a high standard: secure by design, properly tested, and built to run reliably in production. We are looking for an AI Software Engineer with strong, proven experience to build with us across a variety of projects and help set the bar for how we build.
About Alien Intelligence
We are an engineering-led company working at the practical edge of AI. We prefer open and well-understood tools over hype, and we put security and quality at the top of the list, never as an afterthought. You will work across a mix of client and internal projects and across sectors, so no two months look exactly the same. Some work is bespoke (custom models and agentic systems for large organisations); some is productised (off-the-shelf solutions that put AI within reach of smaller businesses).
The Innovation Lab
Alien Intelligence is led by serial entrepreneurs who would rather back a good idea than sit on it, and they encourage the team to do the same. Through our Innovation Lab, team members can put forward new ideas, and where an idea has a proven business model, you can take an ownership stake in bringing it to life. If you have wanted to build your own thing with an experienced team around you, this is a place to do it.
The role
You will be a core engineer building AI-powered products and solutions, hands-on across the stack, with real autonomy and real ownership.
What you will do
- Design and build production software and services across web, data and AI.
- Build features powered by large language models and AI agents, integrating models, tools and data safely and reliably.
- Help businesses adopt agentic layers over their existing systems, building custom models for large organisations and off-the-shelf solutions for smaller ones.
- Write proper tests (unit, integration, and real end-to-end checks) so quality is proven, not assumed.
- Treat security as a first-class requirement: sensible threat modelling, least-privilege by default, and careful handling of data and secrets.
- Stand up and run cloud infrastructure, and keep systems reliable in production.
- Collaborate across projects, review others' work, and help lift the team's engineering bar.
You will have strong guardrails, clear standards, and teammates who hold the line on quality.
What you will work with
A pragmatic, modern stack (you will not have used all of it, and that is fine):
- Languages: Python and TypeScript / Node, with SQL.
- Data: PostgreSQL and relational data, plus vector search and retrieval (pgvector).
- AI: large language models and AI agents (Claude on Amazon Bedrock), prompt and context engineering, structured tool use (Model Context Protocol), and evaluation.
- Infrastructure: containers, managed cloud, CI/CD (GitHub Actions), and infrastructure as code.
- Orchestration: durable workflows for long-running agent processes (Temporal).
- Enterprise integrations: Microsoft 365 and SharePoint via Microsoft Graph, and work-management platforms.
- Good operational practice: monitoring, tracing and reliability, including LLM observability and evaluation (Langfuse, OpenTelemetry).
- AI-assisted engineering: we run an agentic development lifecycle, and Claude Code (with subagents, hooks and automated review) is part of daily work.
About you
Must-haves
- Strong, proven experience building and shipping production software (typically 4+ years), with solid fundamentals (clean code, testing, version control, code review, CI/CD).
- Solid experience with at least one of Python or TypeScript, and comfort with the other; confident with SQL and relational data.
- You have built and shipped B2B or enterprise software: authentication and permissions, audit trails, integrating with the systems businesses already run, and working directly with business stakeholders.
- You have run things in production on a major cloud and care about reliability, observability and operational quality.
- Genuine interest and hands-on experience with LLMs and AI agents: you have built with them, not just read about them.
- You already use AI-assisted development tools (Claude Code, Copilot or similar) as a normal part of how you work, and you verify what they produce.
- Comfortable working in an agile team to a modern SDLC: short iterations, code review, CI/CD, automated testing and observability — including an AI-augmented lifecycle where agents help plan, build and review.
- A security-first mindset, current on best practice for conventional code (OWASP Top 10, secure coding, supply-chain hygiene), LLM applications (prompt injection, insecure output handling, data leakage — OWASP LLM Top 10) and agentic systems (least-privilege tool access, sandboxing, guardrails, and human-in-the-loop for consequential actions). You think about failure modes, and you do not trust output you have not verified.
- A clear communicator who works well in a small, senior team.
- Based in (or relocating to) Perth, with the right to work in Australia.
Bonus points
- Experience building LLM or multi-agent systems, or adding agentic layers to existing software.
- Vector and agentic retrieval (RAG, embeddings, structured knowledge bases), evaluation pipelines, or document-heavy AI (PDF understanding, OCR, citation grounding).
- Kubernetes, infrastructure as code (Terraform or Pulumi), or durable workflow orchestration (Temporal or similar).
- Building or consuming Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers, or LLM observability and evaluation tooling.
- Integrating with Microsoft 365 / SharePoint (Microsoft Graph) or similar enterprise platforms.
- Experience in regulated or compliance-driven environments (ISO management systems, audit trails, evidence handling).
- An entrepreneurial streak: you like turning ideas into working products.
Qualifications and certifications
- A degree in computer science, software engineering or a related field is valued, or equivalent practical experience: we weigh what you have shipped more than where you studied.
- Certifications are a bonus, not a gate. Ones we rate: cloud (AWS Solutions Architect or Developer Associate, or Google Professional Cloud Architect), Kubernetes (CKA / CKAD), and security (ISO/IEC 27001, CISSP or CCSP).
- Anthropic’s new Claude certifications (Claude Certified Developer or Architect) speak directly to how we build. They are new in 2026, so we do not expect them, but we will notice.
We care more about how you think, build and verify than about a checklist of exact technologies. If you are missing a few of the above but you are a strong, careful engineer who learns fast, we want to hear from you.
What we offer
- Company laptop and company mobile phone.
- A flexible, hybrid Perth-based setup.
- The Innovation Lab: back your own ideas and take an ownership stake in the ones with a proven business model.
- Varied work across sectors at the practical edge of AI.
- A small, senior team led by serial entrepreneurs, where your work has direct impact and you are trusted to own it.
- Competitive salary commensurate with experience, plus superannuation.
- Room to grow with the company as the team scales.
How to apply
Send us your CV and a short note on something you have built that you are proud of (a repo, a demo, or a paragraph) to [email protected].
Tell us what interests you about AI and where you think it is going, and any idea you would love to build. We read every application and we move quickly for the right person.
Alien Intelligence is an equal-opportunity employer. We welcome applicants of all backgrounds and are happy to make reasonable adjustments through the hiring process: just let us know what you need. You must have the right to work in Australia.
Pay: $125,000.00 – $135,000.00 per year
Benefits:
- Professional development assistance
- Profit sharing
- Salary packaging
- Work from home
Experience:
- Software development: 3 years (Preferred)
Work Authorisation:
Work Location: Hybrid remote in Perth WA
