A software engineer is the person who turns a product decision into working code that other people can safely change next month. Most of the job is reading and reshaping code that already exists, deciding what not to build, and leaving tests behind so the next release does not break the last one. More and more often it also means wiring an AI model into a real product, with all the care about cost, failure and wrong answers that this brings.
This page gives you a copy-ready software engineer job description you can paste into your careers page or a job board, then the judgement around it: how the role changes by level, what to check while screening, the mistakes that put off good candidates, and which hiring model fits.
Software engineer job description template
Replace the text in square brackets with your own details and delete any line that does not apply.
About the role
[Company] is hiring a Software Engineer to join our [team name] team in [city / remote]. You will design, build and maintain features in our [product type] used by [who uses it], working closely with product managers, designers and other engineers. Part of the role is building AI-assisted features into the product, such as [search over our documents / drafting replies / summarising records], and making sure they behave well when the model is slow, expensive or wrong.
Responsibilities
- Design, build, test and ship features in our [main language, e.g. TypeScript or Python] codebase, from technical design to release.
- Break product requirements into small, reviewable pieces of work and estimate them honestly.
- Write unit and integration tests, and keep the existing test suite green and fast.
- Review teammates’ code with useful, specific comments, and respond well to review on your own.
- Integrate LLM APIs into product features, including streaming responses, structured outputs and prompt versioning.
- Build retrieval over our own data (embeddings and vector search) where a feature needs answers grounded in company content.
- Add guardrails, timeouts, fallbacks and cost tracking around every AI call so the product still works when the model does not.
- Investigate bugs and production incidents, find the root cause and fix it properly rather than patching symptoms.
- Improve the parts of the codebase you touch: clearer names, removed dead code, better error handling.
- Write short design notes and documentation that help the next engineer understand why something was built the way it was.
Requirements
- [X]+ years of professional experience building and shipping software used by real users.
- Strong working knowledge of at least one of TypeScript, Python or Java, and comfort reading code in others.
- Experience with relational databases such as PostgreSQL, including schema design and query performance basics.
- Experience writing automated tests and working in a codebase with continuous integration.
- Comfort with Git, pull requests and code review as a daily habit.
- Hands-on experience calling at least one LLM API from production or production-like code.
- Clear written English for design notes, pull request descriptions and incident write-ups.
Nice to have
- Experience building retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) with a vector store.
- Experience evaluating AI output with test sets rather than by eye.
- Familiarity with Docker and a cloud platform such as AWS.
- Contributions to open-source projects or a public portfolio of code.
What we offer
- [Salary range] plus [bonus / equity, if any].
- [Work mode: remote, hybrid or on-site in city].
- [Learning budget, health cover and other benefits].
How the software engineer role changes by level
Junior software engineer. A junior engineer works on well-defined tickets inside a design someone else has made. The job description should ask for solid fundamentals in one language, an understanding of how to test their own code, and a habit of asking questions early. For AI work, a junior engineer can build a feature on top of an existing prompt and wrapper, but should not be expected to decide how the company handles model failures or spend.
Mid-level software engineer. At this level the engineer owns a feature end to end. They take a loosely written requirement, propose an approach, flag the trade-offs and ship it with tests. On AI features they choose between a plain API call, retrieval or a structured-output approach, and they set up the logging that shows whether the feature is actually helping users. Requirements should mention independent delivery and code review of others.
Senior software engineer. A senior engineer shapes how a whole area of the product is built. They write design documents, set patterns other engineers follow, mentor juniors and take the lead in incidents. For AI-integrated products, a senior engineer decides on evaluation methods, model and vendor choices, data privacy boundaries and cost limits. The job description should ask for evidence of technical decisions they made and later had to live with, not just a longer list of tools.
Skills that matter most and how to check them
A CV full of framework names tells you little. These are the abilities that separate engineers who ship from engineers who stall, with a practical way to test each.
- Reading unfamiliar code. Give the candidate a small repository they have never seen, with one bug, and ask them to find and fix it while talking through what they read. Good engineers navigate before they type.
- Breaking down a problem. Describe a feature in two sentences, such as “let users export their invoices”, and ask how they would split it into pull requests. Listen for questions about edge cases, permissions and data volume.
- Testing judgement. Ask them to write tests for a function you provide. Notice whether they cover the boundaries and failure cases or only the happy path.
- AI feature design. Ask: “Our support chatbot sometimes answers from outdated documents. How would you find out how often, and what would you change?” Strong answers mention evaluation sets, retrieval quality, logging of sources, and a fallback to a human.
- Cost and failure awareness. Ask what happens to their feature if the LLM API takes ten seconds or returns malformed JSON. You want timeouts, retries with limits, schema validation and a sensible user message.
- Code review. Show them a short pull request with a mix of real problems and style nitpicks. See which they raise first and how they word it.
A short paid take-home task or a live pairing session works better than algorithm puzzles for this role, because the job is mostly building and changing product code.
Common software engineer job description mistakes
- Listing every technology in the company. A wall of twenty tools tells candidates you do not know what the job is. Fix: name the main language and two or three tools they will use daily, and put the rest under nice to have.
- Calling it “AI engineer” when it is product work. If the person will call hosted model APIs inside an app rather than train models, say so. Fix: describe the actual AI work, such as retrieval, prompt design and output validation, so you attract product engineers rather than research scientists.
- Asking for a degree as a hard filter. Many strong engineers learned on the job. Fix: ask for “a degree in computer science or equivalent practical experience”.
- Hiding the level. “Software Engineer” alone gets you applicants from fresher to architect. Fix: put the level in the title or the first line of About the role.
- No mention of how the team works. Engineers care about code review, release frequency and on-call. Fix: add one or two lines on how work flows from idea to production.
Contract, contract-to-hire or permanent
A contract software engineer suits a defined piece of work: adding an AI assistant to an existing product, clearing a backlog before a launch, or covering a long leave. You get someone productive quickly without changing headcount, but you should plan the handover from the start.
Contract-to-hire works well when you are building your first AI-integrated features and are not yet sure what profile you need long term. A few months of real work shows you how the engineer handles ambiguity and production issues, which an interview cannot.
Permanent hiring is the right choice for engineers who will own core parts of your product for years, carry knowledge of past decisions and mentor others. Zilo AI can help with any of the three, and you can hire software engineers in India on contract, contract-to-hire or permanent terms. If your team also needs DevOps, data or QA people, our IT hiring page covers the other roles we recruit for.
Frequently asked questions
What should a software engineer job description include?
The level of the role, the main language and stack, what the person will build in their first months, how the team reviews and releases code, the must-have requirements kept short, and practical details such as work mode and salary range. If the role includes AI features, describe them in plain terms.
What is the difference between a software engineer and a full stack developer?
“Software engineer” is the broader title and can cover backend, frontend, infrastructure or AI integration work. A full stack developer is a specific kind of software engineer who builds both the user interface and the server side of web features. Use “software engineer” when the work spans more than web features or is not yet fixed.
Do I need a separate AI engineer to add LLM features to my product?
Usually not. Most product AI features call hosted model APIs, retrieve company data and validate the output, which a software engineer with LLM experience can do inside the existing codebase. A dedicated ML engineer makes sense when you need to train or fine-tune models yourself.
How many responsibilities should a software engineer job description list?
Eight to ten is enough. More than that and the important ones get lost. Lead with what the person will do every week and leave occasional tasks out.
If you would rather have someone else find, screen and shortlist software engineers for you, Zilo AI recruits them in India on contract, contract-to-hire and permanent terms. Talk to Zilo AI about the role and the team it will join.