Senior Implementation Engineer, Strategic Partnerships

About Cooklist Cooklist is the AI grocery-intelligence platform powering meal planning and shopping for millions of consumers across our consumer app and white-label enterprise suite. Our mission is to combine the intelligence of a personal shopper, chef, and nutritionist to help people save time, eat better, and enjoy happier lives. We're profitable, process billions of dollars in transactions at the nation's largest retailers, and our experiences reach millions of people. We're backed by Techstars, Mercury Fund, and industry leaders including the former Chief Technology Officer of a leading U.S. grocer and the former Chief Product Officer of Amazon Fresh. Role Overview We're hiring a Senior Implementation Engineer to deliver and support Cooklist's AI Assistant, Agentic Search, and personalized shopping experiences with leading national and regional grocers. You will own the ongoing technical delivery of these partnerships, helping shoppers discover products, plan meals, and build their baskets through AI-powered experiences. Our implementations evolve over years as we introduce new capabilities and adapt to partner systems. This is a hands-on individual contributor role. You will investigate issues across our codebase and partner systems, ship contained fixes and integration improvements, and scope and coordinate larger feature work with Product and Engineering. You will also lead partner discussions, demonstrate new features, and keep commitments moving to completion. Partner collaboration is primarily virtual, with occasional travel for workshops and launches. We are an AI-leveraged engineering organization. You will use AI coding, research, and automation tools daily to understand unfamiliar systems, investigate problems, and deliver tested solutions faster. Responsibilities

• Own continuous implementation: lead ongoing delivery of our AI Assistant, Agentic Search, and related capabilities from discovery and technical scoping through testing, release, and iteration; maintain clear requirements, milestones, dependencies, and acceptance criteria.
• Investigate across systems: trace issues through API requests, agent tool calls, logs, database queries, and source code; reproduce failures and isolate the cause across Cooklist and partner systems.
• Ship fixes and integration improvements: write production code for contained bugs, data mappings, API adapters, and configuration workflows; contribute tests and submit changes through engineering review.
• Scope and coordinate larger work: turn partner requests into actionable specifications, surface tradeoffs and risks, and agree priorities and delivery plans with Product, Engineering, and partner teams.
• Lead the technical relationship: run working sessions, communicate progress and blockers, manage expectations, and maintain shared context across technical and business stakeholders.
• Own support through resolution: triage requests, implement fixes within your scope, and bring complex issues to the right engineers with clear evidence; keep partners informed and verify resolution.
• Validate and enable releases: test data and integration behavior, coordinate partner acceptance testing, monitor launches, demonstrate new capabilities, and train teams on administrative systems.
• Make each implementation better: build diagnostic tools, automated checks, documentation, and reusable integration patterns that reduce recurring issues and future delivery effort.

Qualifications

• You have 5+ years in implementation engineering, software engineering, integration engineering, or a comparable role, including hands-on delivery for enterprise customers.
• You have recently written and debugged production code. You can navigate an unfamiliar codebase, make a scoped change, write tests, and submit a reviewable pull request.
• You are proficient in Python or a comparable backend language and comfortable working in a Python/Django environment; you can inspect JavaScript when tracing issues across the application.
• You understand REST or GraphQL APIs, authentication, data mapping, retries, and failure handling. You can use SQL, logs, and monitoring to investigate production behavior.
• You can turn an ambiguous request into requirements and a delivery plan, distinguish defects from new functionality, and coordinate work across multiple teams.
• You have led customer technical discussions and demos, explained root causes to business stakeholders, and maintained trust through incidents and shifting priorities.
• You use AI coding and analysis tools regularly, verify their output, and apply sound judgment around tests, production changes, and confidential partner data.
• You bring strong ownership and follow-through, knowing when to solve a problem independently and when to involve another engineer.

Bonus Points

• Experience with grocery, retail, e-commerce, or white-label consumer platforms, especially catalogs, pricing, promotions, inventory, identity, carts, or orders.
• Experience with Django, React Native, AI-powered products, or building internal tools and automated integration tests.
• Experience supporting multi-year enterprise implementations that combine custom development with a shared software platform.

Our Stack

• Languages: Python/Django backend; JavaScript/React Native frontend
• APIs and data: GraphQL; REST integrations; real-time streaming over WebSockets
• Partner systems: catalogs, pricing, promotions, inventory, identity, carts, orders, and administrative tools
• AI platform: internally built prompt and tool libraries, RAG pipelines, and evaluation systems

What We Offer

• Competitive compensation + meaningful equity
• Austin, TX based with WFH flexibility
• Work directly with founders and an elite, tight-knit team
• Ship products and experiences that materially improve the lives of millions
• A high-intensity, high-ownership environment designed for builders
• Work on production AI Assistants, Agentic Search, and personalized shopping experiences with category-leading U.S. grocers