About Compass Regulatory

Compass Regulatory simplifies regulatory work for leading agriculture companies, helping them bring new products to the farmers who need them. We tackle regulatory challenges in a unique way, leveraging a modern software platform that increases automation, security, and organization of regulatory work — supported by a team of deep regulatory experts who help our customers navigate a complex, evolving landscape. We then make that critical data available to product users across the industry, from retailers to farm technology providers.

A nimble, quickly-growing startup based in the Bay Area, Compass is backed by top-tier investors including Battery Ventures, Inspired Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, Cavallo Ventures (Wilbur-Ellis), Fika Ventures, and Twine Ventures.

The Role

We are seeking a Senior Full-Stack Engineer to join our small but mighty technical team. This role sits at the intersection of domain expertise and product engineering — you will work closely with our regulatory specialists to deeply understand the workflows that drive our customers’ businesses, then translate that knowledge into software that is both powerful and elegant.

A core thread running through this work is AI-driven automation. Compass is building toward a future where regulatory requirements research, document preparation, and regulatory submissions are increasingly assisted by intelligent tooling. This engineer will help design and build those capabilities — with a clear-eyed understanding of what AI can and cannot do reliably in high-stakes, domain-specific contexts.

As a senior member of the engineering team, you will go beyond feature delivery to shape the architecture and design of the systems that underpin the product. You will own end-to-end design decisions, evaluate trade-offs across the stack, and ensure the platform scales reliably as our customer base and data footprint grow. We care deeply about building the right technology for our customers — as well as building the technology right.

What You’ll Do

• Embed with our regulatory domain experts to develop a working knowledge of the workflows, document types, and compliance requirements that define our customers’ day-to-day work — and use that understanding to build software that genuinely improves how they operate.
• Design and build AI-assisted features across core regulatory workflows, including regulatory requirements research, document preparation, and regulatory submissions — with careful attention to accuracy, reliability, and the limits of automation in a compliance-sensitive environment.
• Evaluate, integrate, and iterate on AI/LLM tooling in the context of full-stack production systems, bringing both enthusiasm for the possibilities and a grounded view of failure modes, cost structures, and edge cases.
• Design and evolve the architecture of our core platform, making deliberate choices about data models, service boundaries, and system interfaces that will support years of growth.
• Build features across the full stack — from database schema and API design through polished, performant front-end experiences.
• Evaluate and introduce new patterns, libraries, or infrastructure improvements that raise the bar for the team.
• Partner with the Head of Engineering to shape the technical roadmap, balancing long-term architectural health with near-term customer needs.
• Write clear, well-tested code and advocate for engineering practices that keep the codebase maintainable as the team grows.
• Collaborate closely with product, regulatory, and customer-facing teams to translate complex domain problems into simple, effective software.

What You Bring

• 6– 10+ years of professional experience as a full-stack engineer, with demonstrated ownership of system design and architectural decisions at production scale.
• Strong experience with our stack or closely related technologies: Python & Django, PostgreSQL, HTMX, Alpine.js, and TailwindCSS.
• Hands-on experience integrating AI/LLM capabilities — such as OpenAI, Anthropic, or open-source models — into production full-stack applications, including a working understanding of prompt design, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), document data extraction, and output validation strategies.
• A clear-eyed perspective on the limitations and risks of AI systems: hallucination, latency, cost, context constraints, and the particular sensitivities of deploying AI in compliance or document-heavy environments.
• A track record of designing systems that are clean, scalable, and easy to reason about — and the communication skills to explain design choices to technical and non-technical collaborators alike.
• Proficiency with cloud infrastructure and DevOps tooling: AWS, Terraform, Docker, CI/CD pipelines, and observability tools (logging, monitoring, alerting).
• Solid understanding of the full web development lifecycle, from schema design and migrations through deployment and production support.
• Comfort working in a small-team environment where you will wear multiple hats and operate with significant autonomy.

Nice to Have

• Experience building software for regulatory, compliance, legal, or other document-intensive workflow applications.
• Familiarity with evaluation and testing frameworks for AI outputs (e.g., evals, red-teaming, human-in-the-loop review pipelines).
• Interest in agriculture, food systems, or regulated industries.
• Experience building and scaling products at an early-stage startup.

What We Offer

• A chance to use your technical skills to improve our food and agriculture system — work that matters.
• Deep product ownership: you will shape architecture, not just execute on it.
• A front-row seat to the emerging use of AI in a highly specialized, consequential domain.
• A passionate and supportive team eager to learn from each other and our customers.
• Competitive salary, meaningful equity, and full benefits including healthcare + FSA, 401k, and flexible time off.

Location

Remote — open to candidates anywhere in the US. Our company headquarters is based in San Francisco and our engineering team is distributed.

Compensation

We take a market-based approach to pay, and pay may vary depending on your location. U.S. locations are categorized into two zones based on a cost of labor index for that geographic area. The successful candidate’s starting pay will be determined based on job-related skills, experience, qualifications, work location, and market conditions. These ranges may be modified in the future.

Zone 1 (San Francisco/Oakland/San Jose; New York; Los Angeles; Seattle): $160,000-$210,000

Zone 2 (All other): $130,000-$180,000

This role is also eligible to participate in the company’s equity plan subject to the terms of the applicable plans and policies. Additional benefits include time off and retirement plan eligibility further detailed in company policies.

We are an equal opportunity employer and do not discriminate in hiring or any employment decision based on race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), marital status, ancestry, physical or mental disability, genetic information, veteran status, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, or other applicable legally protected characteristic. We consider qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law.

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