Knak is a mission-driven company
Why? Because our time is limited, our competition is fierce, and our margin for error is small. For us to have the greatest impact on the world, we need to be laser focused on our core mission, which is...
Empowering people to be creative.
That’s why Knak exists.
We are a world-class enterprise email and landing page creation platform with a focus on making successful and happy customers by providing them with an incredibly powerful, yet easy to use creation platform.
Our industry leading SaaS solution is built by Marketers, for Marketers. We know that it’s the small things that make the biggest impact and that emails and landing pages are where the rubber hits the road when it comes to Marketing Automation. We change the way Marketers work by making them more efficient, while improving conversion rate of their campaigns and helping them stay on brand.
Oh, and we have a bit of fun while doing it, too!
We’re looking for an experienced software developer to build and scale the AI agents behind Knak’s platform. In this role you'll develop the agent harness itself: the orchestration, tool calling, context management, and guardrails that let agents analyze data, generate complex marketing assets, and deliver real value to our customers. You'll also ensure we know they work, by building the evaluation suites that measure agent quality and catch regressions before they reach customers.
This is a hands-on role for someone who wants to be deep in agent internals every day. You'll also contribute to architecture decisions, mentor teammates, and collaborate across engineering and product to shape the future of marketing automation.What You’ll Be Doing- Build the agent harness: Design and implement the core agent runtime in Python: orchestration loops, tool definitions and execution, memory and context management, structured outputs, and failure handling.
- Own agent evaluations: Build and maintain eval datasets, automated evaluators, and LLM-as-judge pipelines (LangSmith) so every prompt, model, or harness change is measured, not guessed at.
- Iterate on agent quality: Diagnose agent failures from traces, tune prompts and tool designs, and run model comparisons and benchmarks to drive measurable improvements.
- Create AI microservices: Build Python and Node.js services for agent hosting and LLM interaction.
- Build reliable APIs: Develop and maintain the Laravel (PHP) APIs that integrate agents into the Knak platform, ensuring testability, observability, and performance.
- Deploy to the cloud: Use AWS services (Lambda, Bedrock, CDN delivery) to build secure, scalable infrastructure for agents.
- Optimize databases: Tune MySQL queries and indexing to improve speed and reduce latency.
- Elevate code quality: Lead and participate in code reviews, maintaining high standards across the team.
- Collaborate cross-functionally: Work with product, design, QA, and DevOps to align solutions with business needs.
- Mentor engineers: Share knowledge on agent development and evaluation practices, and set a high bar for technical excellence.
- 6+ years of software development experience
- Hands-on experience building LLM-powered agents in production, including tool calling, orchestration, context management, and prompt engineering
- Experience designing and running evaluations for LLM systems, including dataset curation, automated evaluators, LLM-as-judge, and regression tracking
- Strong proficiency in Python, Node.js, and MySQL
- Expertise in RESTful APIs, TDD, CI/CD (GitHub Actions)
- Experience with SaaS architecture, microservices, and AWS
- Knowledge of observability, performance tuning, and scalability
- Familiarity with Docker/Kubernetes
- Excellent problem-solving skills and a collaborative mindset
- Interest in, or experience with, full-stack web development spanning frontend (e.g. Vue), backend (e.g. PHP Laravel), and agent engineering, with a willingness to work across all three as the product needs
- Experience in AI-powered product development
- Background with LLMs, LangGraph, or AI agent frameworks
- Prior experience in a fast-growing SaaS company
Base Salary: The anticipated base salary range for this position is $135,000 - 170,000k/year. Final compensation will be determined based on factors including relevant experience, skills, qualifications, and internal equity. This range reflects base salary only and does not include other forms of compensation that may be available as part of the total rewards package.
What We Offer
At Knak we have four foundational pillars. Culture, customers, product and growth. Culture is our number one pillar because we know that is at the core of building a strong company that can build amazing products and delight our customers. We do this with a laser focus on hiring the right people who are smart, positive and who want more than the typical nine-to-five offers.
We offer an extremely rewarding, second to none work environment as acknowledged by Ottawa’s Best Places to Work 2025! We show our investment in our people through our competitive salaries, equity in the company, great benefits, paid vacation, Life leave days (because life happens), team lunches and off-sites, and most importantly our commitment to YOUR career growth.
If this sounds like something you’re looking for, then we’d love to hear from you!
If you don’t see yourself fully reflected in every job requirement listed on the posting above, we still encourage you to reach out and apply. Research has shown that women and underrepresented groups often only apply when they feel 100% qualified. We strongly encourage applicants of all genders, ages, ethnicities, cultures, abilities, sexual orientations, and life experiences to apply. Knak believes in creating an inclusive, barrier-free working environment. If you require ANY accommodation to the interview process please contact [email protected].
At Knak, our recruitment process includes AI screening for keywords and minimum qualifications as well as video interviews which are transcribed with AI. Humans are still at the core of our decision making! Please note that this job post is for an existing vacancy.
Click here to view the Knak Privacy Policy
Similar Jobs
What you need to know about the Chicago Tech Scene
Key Facts About Chicago Tech
- Number of Tech Workers: 245,800; 5.2% of overall workforce (2024 CompTIA survey)
- Major Tech Employers: McDonald’s, John Deere, Boeing, Morningstar
- Key Industries: Artificial intelligence, biotechnology, fintech, software, logistics technology
- Funding Landscape: $2.5 billion in venture capital funding in 2024 (Pitchbook)
- Notable Investors: Pritzker Group Venture Capital, Arch Venture Partners, MATH Venture Partners, Jump Capital, Hyde Park Venture Partners
- Research Centers and Universities: Northwestern University, University of Chicago, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Illinois Institute of Technology, Argonne National Laboratory, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
