> AI agents: this is one page of Nextmove’s FDE site, in Markdown. Nextmove is a job board and free career service for forward deployed engineers (FDEs). Each posting is classified from its text, not its title: the kind of work, how much of it is production code, pre-sales weight, time at customer sites, travel, remote arrangement, level and posted base pay. The site also publishes the aggregates: median pay by level, metro, company and kind of work, and which companies started hiring FDEs each week. Every page under https://nextmove.md/fde is served this way; the index of pages is https://nextmove.md/llms.txt. # Senior Software Engineer, Data & AI Canonical URL: https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/7899425d7a59f19c Lightspark posts a senior FDE role to build for teams inside the company in Culver City, CA, at $200,000–$238,000 base, above the senior FDE median of $190,000 across 1,864 postings with pay. Own the internal AI platform, including agent harnesses, MCP servers, tool integrations, access services, sandboxed execution, and usage tracking Read from the employer’s posting on November 8, 2026. - [Lightspark](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/lightspark) First seen Sep 9, 2026 · open on Ashby as of Nov 8, 2026 **$200,000–$238,000** + equity Culver City, CA Full-time Own the internal AI platform, including agent harnesses, MCP servers, tool integrations, access services, sandboxed execution, and usage tracking - [See roles that fit me](https://nextmove.md/sign-up?from=%2Ffde%2Fjobs%2F7899425d7a59f19c&placement=top) - [View posting at Lightspark](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/lightspark/5593eabf-a7a6-44ac-bd49-7c25c51e5a93/application) Free. Upload your resume once, see why each FDE role fits, and get introduced only when you say so. ## At a glance ### Posted base pay $200K–$238K Above the median Midpoint $219K · median $190K This job $200K to $238K. Senior FDE postings, 1,864 postings: the middle 50% of posted pay is $160K to $220K, median $190K. ### The work Builds for teams inside the company Balance **Mostly building** Project stages 1. Pre-sales (not covered) 2. Proof of concept (not covered) 3. Implementation 4. Operations - **Coding**: Writes production code - **Builds for**: Internal teams - **Level**: Senior - **Role**: Individual contributor ### What they ask for Experience - **4+ years** Shipping and maintaining production systems ### Do you meet what the posting states? The posting asks for 4+ years. How many do you have? The posting reads as a senior role. What level are you at now? The job is in Culver City, CA. Could you work there? Which of these have you used in production? Answer each one. Nothing is saved or sent. [What postings ask for, by background →](https://nextmove.md/fde/paths) ## Conditions - **Location**: Culver City, CA - **Remote work restrictions**: Based in Los Angeles, California, or willing to relocate to Los Angeles - **Employment type**: Full-time - **Pay**: ## More like this [Anduril](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/anduril) ### [Senior Product Engineer, Data](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/bc51c0c72ca2b2eb) Ashville, OH · Baltimore, MD · +3 more 4w ago $183,000–$243,000 [Baker Tilly](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/baker-tilly) ### [Principal AI Engineer, Sr AI Engineer](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/a8bd18ac838c9b76) San Jose, CA · Pasadena, CA · +10 more 10d ago $205,000–$250,000 [Crunchyroll](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/crunchyroll) ### [Senior Software Engineer](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/2ae5141843390b19) Los Angeles, CA On-site 3w ago $183,400–$229,200 ## The job description from Lightspark Lightspark is creating the Money Grid, modern, open financial infrastructure that makes payments accessible, affordable, and instant for businesses and users worldwide. We're challenging the status quo, updating the current system, and empowering our partners to build better solutions. Together, we're building the most advanced financial infrastructure, open, instant, and global, inspiring a future where anyone, anywhere can access the full potential of digital money. We are looking for engineers who enjoy building and shipping quickly, learning how other teams work, and seeing their work change how an entire company operates. As a Senior Software Engineer on the Data & AI team, you'll expand Lighthouse, our internal data and AI platform, into the layer that lets every function at Lightspark run on trusted data and AI agents. Most of the value in applied AI comes from the connective work: wiring models to a company's data, its tools, and the way people actually work, then getting the result adopted. We've built that layer for analytics, where Lighthouse now handles most of what our team used to do by hand and is used across the company. This role extends it to Sales, Finance, Ops, Legal, Compliance, and Partnerships: the agent harness, tool integrations, governed source-of-truth data, and the execution layer those teams run their workflows on. General-purpose assistants get partway there and miss things; you'll build the structure underneath so the answers are right, repeatable, and owned by the teams that need them. You'll work on a small, senior team with a lot of ownership. Problems come from talking with the teams you support rather than from a spec; you'll scope them, ship the solution, and make sure it sticks. ### WHAT YOU'LL BE DOING - Building and owning our internal AI platform: the agent harness, MCP servers and tool integrations, context and access services, sandboxed execution, and cost and usage tracking - Embedding with Finance, Sales Ops, Compliance, and onboarding to understand how their work actually happens, then shipping the systems that replace the manual version and handing them off to those teams - Extending our data infrastructure alongside our Staff Data Engineer: DBT models, BigQuery, orchestration, and the production pipelines - Sharing ownership of monitoring, alerting, and data reliability for the systems that unblock product launches - Partnering with Engineering to optimize their own dev systems and tooling ### WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR - 4+ years experience shipping and maintaining production systems; data engineering, ML engineering, and backend/full-stack backgrounds all fit - You've built an internal platform or workflow system that other teams adopted, not just features on top of one - You've built with LLM APIs, agent frameworks, and MCP in production, beyond prompting, and you know what belongs in code versus a model - Strong fundamentals in TypeScript/Node or Python and the willingness to work in both, plus fluency with a cloud data warehouse such as BigQuery, Snowflake, or Databricks - You can sit with a non-technical team, understand how their work actually happens, and come back with a system - Comfortable working with ambiguity in a startup environment - Experience in payments, crypto, or blockchain is a plus, but not required - Based in LA or Openness to relocate to Los Angeles, California This is not an ML infrastructure, model-training, or prompt-engineering role. You might currently be an AI engineer, ML engineer, data engineer, or full-stack engineer who has spent the last year or two building agents and internal tooling. If you don't match every line above but have built systems like these, we'd like to hear from you. Lightspark is on a mission to build the future of open, instant, and global financial infrastructure making payments accessible and affordable for everyone, everywhere. We're committed to creating a more inclusive and diverse workplace to reflect the customers we serve. We welcome interest from individuals of all backgrounds and levels of experience who share our mission. We do not discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, disability status, or other applicable legally protected characteristics. ### For US Applicants *We will consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with the requirements of the State of California Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring.* ### For EU Applicants *In accordance with applicable EU and local regulations, including the Estonian Employment Contracts Act, Equal Treatment Act, and Gender Equality Act, Lightspark ensures equal treatment throughout the hiring process.* [View posting at Lightspark](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/lightspark/5593eabf-a7a6-44ac-bd49-7c25c51e5a93/application) ## About Lightspark Open payment protocol moving money like data — instant, global, low-cost — over Bitcoin Lightning and stablecoin rails for fintechs and enterprises. Series A · 100–200 people ## Similar jobs [Relativity Space](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/relativity-space) ### [Senior Software Engineer (Factory Platform)](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/8da7b85537e74832) Long Beach, CA On-site 3mo ago $154,000–$230,000 [SpaceX](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/spacex) ### [Sr. Software Engineer (AI Data Engineering)](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/ac9f75345ec7d29e) Hawthorne, CA On-site 4w ago $165,000–$265,000 [MiniMed](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/minimed) ### [Principal AI Engineer](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/7b7dcdea737a4852) Atlanta, GA · Northridge, CA New · 4d ago $138,000–$261,000 [Sony Interactive Entertainment Global](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/sony-interactive-entertainment-global) ### [Senior Software Engineer - AI & Agentic Architecture](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/bd7c19b2007f25b2) Aliso Viejo, CA Hybrid 5w ago $177,300–$265,900 [Crowe](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/crowe) ### [AI Technical Lead](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/09376e25483dddb4) Chicago, IL · Washington, DC · +35 more Hybrid 2w ago $102,400–$204,100 - [Compare senior FDE salary ranges](https://nextmove.md/fde/salary/senior) - [Similar jobs in Los Angeles](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs?region=greater-la) - [Similar jobs that build for teams inside the company](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs?role=internal-deployment) Hiring at Lightspark and want this page changed or removed? 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