As Staff Software Engineer, you will be part of a dynamic, cross-functional team dedicated to enhancing the customer experience. You will collaborate closely with Design, Product Management, and Engineering experts to tackle real-world challenges and deliver innovative solutions that elevate our retail offerings.
What You'll Do
Lead the development of high-quality applications that are robust, observable and measurable. Using extreme programming (XP) practices and a user-centric approach
Navigate the entire application lifecycle in collaboration with designers, product managers, and other engineers on the product team
Leverage critical thinking, lead lean experimentation and influence decisions backed by data and industry best practices to implement desired business outcomes
Establish and lead product engineering and software standards and continuously elevate existing standards using the new ones in the industry
Mentor junior team members in pairing sessions, one-on-ones and ad-hoc as the need arises, and create teachable moments
Contribute to cultural transformation by modeling partnership, collaboration, and technical initiatives and giving and receiving feedback regularly both within the team and across the organization
Champion XP practice and knows when to customize it for effectiveness and also engages in conversations around practice, processes and community
Additional tasks may be assigned
Addendum
STAFF AI SOFTWARE ENGINEER
Design and build modular, headless AI backend services, advanced RAG architectures, and multi-agent orchestration workflows (e.g., LangChain, AutoGen, CrewAI).
Construct enterprise-grade Model Context Protocol (MCP) gateways, Application Programming Interface (API) integration/mediation layers, rate limiters, and security proxies that allow autonomous agents to safely read and write to enterprise systems.
Develop lightweight, streaming simulation frontends ("Dry-Run" interfaces) solely to validate agent behaviors, prompt strategies, and human-in-the-loop workflows during pilot discovery.
Collaborate with Applied/Data Science and Machine Learning specialists to fine-tune Small Language Models (SLMs), execute weight quantization (AWQ/GPTQ), and optimize GPU memory utilization for high-throughput inference.
Instrument distributed tracing, token utilization logging, and inference latency telemetry across the AI stack.
Package reusable code libraries, containerized microservices, and integration SDKs for domain delivery and implementation teams.
Architect resilient Compound AI Systems that orchestrate dynamic routing between deterministic APIs, specialized SLMs, and frontier LLMs.
Requirements
6+ years of demonstrated experience building and scaling production applications using foundation models, RAG, or agentic workflows
6+ years of experience integrating AI applications securely with enterprise data, APIs, and identity/access controls
4+ years of experience evaluating and optimizing AI application quality, latency, reliability, and cost
What Skills You Have
Required
6+ years of experience in software development
Proven ability to manage multiple competing priorities
Advanced knowledge of application design patterns, event-driven architecture, database schemas, and testing strategies
Experience with large-scale application troubleshooting and performance tuning
Demonstrated experience working with major cloud platforms (GCP, AWS, or Azure)
Knowledge and experience with continuous integration, continuous deployment, and test-driven development
Preferred
Bachelor's Degree or equivalent in MIS, Computer Science or related field
Familiarity and experie
Numbers & Facts
Location
Menomonee Falls, WI (Remote)
Industry
Retail
Company Size
10,000 employees or more
Year Founded
1962
Website
http://www.kohls.com
About Company
At Kohl's, our mission is to inspire and empower families to lead fulfilled lives. And there's no more rewarding job than that. Because it's not just about selling things. It's about letting customers know that the things that make their lives better are within their reach. We build great brands, launch new technologies to make shopping easier, contribute our time and dollars to improve the world we live in and dream up ways to empower our customers and Associates to create a life they love. Our Associates make a difference in the lives of our customers. Let us make a difference in yours.
Welcome to Kohl's.