Lead Software Engineer

America's Test Kitchen is looking for a Lead Software Engineer to join our Retention Zone and lead the charge on bringing AI into our subscription products and to drive subscriber value by delivering new experiences. This is a hands-on individual contributor role for someone who can identify where AI creates real subscriber value, architect the right approach, work with Product to prioritize and build it — while raising the bar for how the broader engineering team thinks about and works with AI.

You won't just advise. You'll prototype, ship, and iterate on AI features that make a tangible difference to our subscribers — working shoulder-to-shoulder with our Content Engagement and Search & Discovery product teams to make it happen.

Key Responsibilities

• Identify the highest-leverage opportunities to embed AI into our products — from intelligent content recommendations and personalization to smarter search and completely new experiences that add value to our subscribers.
• Partner closely with the Product Managers for Content Engagement and Search & Discovery to shape roadmaps, define AI-driven features, and ensure technical approaches align with subscriber and business goals
• Design and build AI-powered features end-to-end: data pipelines, model integration, APIs, and the product surfaces that subscribers interact with
• Prototype quickly, validate with real usage, and iterate toward production-quality solutions
• Establish the team's AI engineering practices — evaluation frameworks, prompt management, fine-tuning approaches, observability, and responsible AI guardrails
• Partner with subscriber success to ensure AI features solve genuine subscriber problems and drive measurable outcomes
• Act as a technical force multiplier for the broader engineering org — reviewing AI-related work, mentoring engineers, and sharing knowledge across teams
• Stay close to the rapidly evolving AI landscape and bring the right tools and techniques in at the right time

Required Qualifications

• 7+ years of software engineering experience, with at least 2 years focused on shipping AI/ML features in production
• Deep familiarity with LLMs and modern AI tooling — prompt engineering, RAG, function calling, fine-tuning, vector databases, and agentic frameworks
• Strong software engineering fundamentals: system design, APIs, scalable data pipelines, and clean, maintainable code
• Experience owning AI features from concept through production and measuring their real-world impact
• A collaborative working style — comfortable partnering with product managers to translate customer needs into technical solutions
• Ability to communicate technical tradeoffs clearly to non-engineering stakeholders

Nice to Haves

• Prior experience in a lead IC role at a SaaS company
• Experience applying AI to content engagement, search relevance, or personalization problems
• Familiarity with AI safety, evaluation, and responsible AI best practices
• Background in a media domain

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent professional experience
• Proven experience working on high-traffic, customer-facing web applications and applying AI technologies in consumer online products.
• A passion for continuous learning and a "test and learn" mindset

We recognize that strong candidates may not meet every qualification listed. If you’re excited about this role and believe you can contribute, we encourage you to apply.

Location: This role is based in our Boston, MA headquarters (Seaport District)

Salary Range:

$175,000-200,000

The range provided is based on what we reasonably expect to pay for this job as of the time of posting. The actual salary offered will be determined based on multiple factors, including but not limited to the candidate’s relevant experience, job-related knowledge, skills, geographical location, and other job-related factors permitted by law.

Why You’ll Love Working at America’s Test Kitchen

• Build products used by millions of passionate home cooks
• Work on a modern, evolving tech stack with real-world scale and complexity
• Have meaningful influence on technical decisions without people-management overhead
• Collaborate with thoughtful, mission-driven teammates across engineering, product, data, and marketing
• Join a company that values experimentation, learning, and craftsmanship

About America's Test Kitchen

The mission of America's Test Kitchen (ATK) is to empower and inspire confidence, community, and creativity in the kitchen. Founded in 1992, the company is the leading multimedia cooking resource serving millions of fans with TV shows (America's Test Kitchen, Cook's Country, and America's Test Kitchen: The Next Generation), a magazine (Cook's Illustrated), cookbooks, a podcast (Proof), FAST channels, short-form video series, and the ATK Essential Membership for digital content. Based in a state-of-the-art 15,000-square-foot test kitchen in Boston's Seaport District, ATK has earned the trust of home cooks and culinary experts alike thanks to its one-of-a-kind processes and best-in-class techniques. Fifty full-time (admittedly very meticulous) test cooks, editors, and product testers spend their days tweaking every variable to find the very best recipes, equipment, ingredients, and techniques. Learn more at https://www.americastestkitchen.com/.

Why America's Test Kitchen:

We're passionate about cooking, and about creating the best place to work. We're small enough for your ideas to make a big impact, and large enough to offer you opportunities to grow professionally at any stage of your career. We want you to take risks and make mistakes — that's how innovation happens in our test kitchen, in our offices, and in life.

We at America's Test Kitchen believe food media can be a powerful force for social change. We are passionate about building an inclusive workforce that represents many different cultures, backgrounds, abilities, identities, and perspectives.

We welcome your application.