The Impact of a Sr. Lead AI Engineer at Coupa:
We're looking for a senior Applied AI Engineer to help us build the harness that supplier agents run inside. You'll own platform-layer work: the skill framework, the tool layer that wraps Coupa APIs, the sandboxed execution environment, audit and replay logging, and the eval pipeline that tells us how it is all working. You'll also own the cloud infrastructure that runs it — how the platform is deployed, configured, and kept secure in production.
You'll start as a strong IC partnering with the team lead on architecture, and we expect you to ramp quickly into leading harness design yourself. This is a role for someone who wants ownership of a foundational system at the moment it's being built, not someone looking to maintain one that already exists.
What You'll Do:
- Design and build the agent harness — skill loading, tool invocation, context management, the execution sandbox, compaction patterns and sub-agents.
- Stand up the evaluation pipeline: how we measure skill effectiveness, catch regressions, and turn production failures into fixed behaviors.
- Partner with product and engineering to ship the first 3–5 supplier-facing use cases (invoicing, catalog, strategic views) on top of the platform you build.
- Define and maintain the cloud deployment and configuration for the platform. How it gets to production, how it scales, and how it stays secure.
- Make architectural calls on runtime isolation, credential handling, audit logging, and tenant separation, in collaboration with DevOps specialists.
- Raise the bar for the rest of the team on how to build with agentic tooling, what to automate, what to verify, and what to leave to humans.
What You Will Bring to Coupa:
- Have 6+ years shipping production software and are strong in Python and/or TypeScript.
- Have built platform or infrastructure systems that other engineers depend on — CLIs, runtimes, internal platforms.
- Have shipped at least one LLM-powered product to real users and have opinions about why most of them don't work.
- Are a daily, heavy user of agentic coding tools — Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, or equivalents — and have a point of view on how to get the most out of them.
- Have side projects. Real ones. Things you've built because you couldn't stop thinking about them. Ideally things the new generation of AI tools made possible for you to finish.
- Write and speak English fluently — skill authoring is prose-heavy and the team operates in English.
- Have deployed and operated containerized services in production. You understand network isolation, infrastructure-as-code, secrets management, and least-privilege IAM, not just the application layer.
- Think in systems: you reason about tokens, latency, failure modes, and user outcomes together, not as separate concerns.
What the Team is Saying
Coupa Compensation & Benefits Highlights
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Healthcare Strength — Company materials describe comprehensive healthcare and mental wellness programs for employees and their families, positioning well‑being as a core pillar of the package.
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Leave & Time Off Breadth — Generous paid time off, parental leave, and company Wellness Days are highlighted, with remote‑work flexibility available for many roles.
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Parental & Family Support — Family‑focused offerings include parental leave, fertility benefits, family medical leave, and on‑site mother’s rooms to support caregivers.
Coupa Insights
What We Do
Coupa is a global technology company that helps businesses run smarter by connecting all the ways they spend money — from procurement and expenses to payments and supply chain decisions — in one intelligent platform. In simple terms, Coupa gives organizations the visibility and control they need to make better financial choices, reduce waste, and drive real impact. It’s where technology meets purpose: helping companies manage their resources more responsibly while creating a positive ripple across their people, partners, and the planet.
Why Work With Us
At Coupa, we prioritize an inclusive and empathetic workplace where every voice is valued. Our teams are proactive and accountable, ensuring we collaborate effectively to achieve our goals. The foundation of our culture rests on our people; we believe in fostering an environment that encourages innovation and curiosity.
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Employees work remotely.
Our virtual-first approach is intentional. It gives you the freedom to do your best work in a space that supports focus, balance, and creativity, while staying connected to a global team of changemakers who are redefining the future of business spend
