2+ years of professional software engineering experience with ownership of production systems. Proven track record of shipping AI-powered products to production. Hands-on experience with large language models (LLMs) in real applications. Strong computer science fundamentals (data structures, algorithms, systems design). Backend engineering skills in at least one modern web stack (e.g., Python, Go, Node). Comfort with relational databases and larger datasets. Experience building modern web front-ends, ideally with React. Experience writing secure, testable, maintainable code. Experience automating and simplifying dev/test/ops workflows. Mentoring less experienced engineers.