Sr Software Engineer – AI Ops

We are committed to provide our Employees a stable work environment with equal opportunity for learning and personal growth. Creativity and innovation are encouraged for improving the effectiveness of Southwest Airlines. Above all, Employees will be provided the same concern, respect, and caring attitude within the organization that they are expected to share externally with every Southwest Customer.

At Southwest Airlines, we believe that flying should feel like freedom. For over 50 years, we’ve been connecting people to what matters most with low fares, legendary hospitality, and a heart for service. Our culture is built on the principles of fun , friendliness , and family , making us one of the most admired workplaces in the world.

If you’re passionate about making a difference, love working in a fast-paced environment, and want to help millions of travelers reach their destinations with a smile, Southwest Airlines is the place for you. Here, your career can truly take flight .

Drive the technical direction and feature roadmap of large-scale cloud systems

Serve as a technical lead contributing to and directing the efforts of development teams, including internal and external team members

Determines operational feasibility by evaluating analysis, problem definition, requirements, solution development, and proposed solutions

Drives detailed definition of feature requirements through discussions with product managers and customers

Supports continuous improvement by investigating alternatives and new technologies

Prepares and installs solutions by determining and designing system specifications, standards, and programming

Evaluates code to ensure that it is valid, is properly structured, meets industry standards, and is compatible with browsers, devices, or operating systems

Mentor Software Engineers to allow for skill/knowledge development through advice, coaching, and training opportunities

Update job knowledge by studying state-of-the-art development tools, programming techniques and computing equipment; participating in educational opportunities; reading professional publications; maintaining personal networks; participating in professional organizations

May perform other job duties as directed by Employee's Leaders

Advanced knowledge of software development methodologies, practices, concepts, and technologies obtained through formal training and / or work experience

Proactively shares knowledge and skills of software development and testing to solve a range of problems

Advanced knowledge of at least one required programming language

Excellent partnering, communication, negotiation skills, and execution in working with various Technology or partner Teams

Ability to articulate (verbally / visually) ideas, approach, concepts, options, risk, impact, and provides guidance to technical, non-technical, and Leadership audiences

Ability to lead multiple assignments, whether administrative or project related, while maintaining a successful level of completion in all responsible work

Ability to mentor others

Ability to lead ideating, presentations, mentoring and group-thinking sessions

Ability to influence without authority

Required: Required: Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems or related field and/or equivalent formal training

Required: Advanced-level experience, seasoned and specialized knowledge in: Software development and methodologies 5-7 years of relevant work-related experience 5+ years in Production support / SRE for cloud or AI/ML applications 4+ years using strong Python —debugging, profiling, fixing production issues 3+ years in Cloud-native AWS—Lambda, ECS/EKS, API Gateway, DynamoDB, S3 3+ years in Observability—Datadog/CloudWatch/OTel, log/metric/trace analysis 3+ years in CI/CD, IaC basics (Terraform), and SRE practices—SLOs, error budgets

5-7 years of relevant work-related experience

5+ years in Production support / SRE for cloud or AI/ML applications

4+ years using strong Python —debugging, profiling, fixing production issues

3+ years in Cloud-native AWS—Lambda, ECS/EKS, API Gateway, DynamoDB, S3

3+ years in Observability—Datadog/CloudWatch/OTel, log/metric/trace analysis

3+ years in CI/CD, IaC basics (Terraform), and SRE practices—SLOs, error budgets

Preferred: Experience in: FinOps for AI inference (cost-per-call, token economics) Eval frameworks (Ragas, DeepEval, Promptfoo) for AI features Back-office workflow automation experience Hands-on with agentic frameworks (LangChain/LangGraph/CrewAI) in support context Docker + Kubernetes for AI workloads

FinOps for AI inference (cost-per-call, token economics)

Eval frameworks (Ragas, DeepEval, Promptfoo) for AI features

Back-office workflow automation experience

Hands-on with agentic frameworks (LangChain/LangGraph/CrewAI) in support context

Docker + Kubernetes for AI workloads

Must meet confidentiality expectations as to confidential, proprietary and sensitive Company information

Ability to work extended hours as needed

Southwest Airlines is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Please print/save this job description because it won't be available after you apply.