Harvey AI

I’ve really enjoyed working on Infrastructure and Platform at Harvey. Building AI infrastructure is challenging, fast-moving, and incredibly exciting. The scope and complexity of problems are much larger than what I’ve experienced at other companies, and there is a real opportunity to make a meaningful impact.

Pros

• High ownership and scope: The scope of engineering work is exceptionally high, often exceeding what you would find at many AI labs. Engineers have the opportunity to own critical systems and solve impactful problems.
• Strong upside: If Harvey continues to execute well, there is significant financial upside from being part of a company at this stage.
• Pioneer in Legal AI: Harvey is helping define the Legal AI space, which makes the work both exciting and meaningful.
• Interesting technical problems: The infrastructure challenges are genuinely unique — building reliable, scalable systems around AI workloads is some of the most interesting work I’ve done.
• Approachable technical leadership: The technical leadership team is one of Harvey’s biggest strengths. They are highly approachable, technically strong, and consistently make time to help engineers. They are actively involved in solving problems, providing guidance, and creating an environment where engineers can do their best work.

Cons

Competition from foundation model companies: The AI landscape moves extremely quickly, and there is always pressure from foundation model companies to move up the stack. Continued differentiation will be important.

Infrastructure maturity: The infra stack is still maturing. Some systems have grown quickly and accumulated technical debt, leading to reliability challenges. The good news is that technical leadership recognizes this and is actively working to improve the foundations.

Advice to Management

Engineers are highly motivated by growth and recognition. As the company scales, it would be valuable to have a clearer performance-based growth framework that rewards impact, ownership, and technical excellence.

Creating more transparency around promotion criteria, leveling, and performance evaluation would help retain and motivate strong engineers while ensuring that growth keeps pace with the level of responsibility people are taking on.