Staff Software Engineer, Applied AI

Staff Software Engineer, Applied AI LocationSan FranciscoEmployment TypeFull timeDepartmentPortfolio CompaniesAbout the RoleWe're building AI products that solve real problems for real customers. This role sits at the intersection of product and engineering– you'll own features end-to-end, from understanding user problems to shipping production code that scales.Applied AI product engineering is a new discipline. You won't just be integrating APIs – you'll be designing AI systems that work reliably in production, building evaluation frameworks to measure quality, and iterating rapidly based on real user feedback. You'll work directly with customers to understand their workflows and translate that understanding into product decisions.This is not a research role. We're looking for engineers who ship. You'll be measured by the products you deliver and the problems you solve, not by papers published or models trained. The best candidates combine deep technical skills with strong product intuition and a relentless focus on user outcomes.What You'll DoDesign, build, and ship AI-powered product features from concept through production deploymentDevelop and maintain LLM-based systems including RAG pipelines, agents, and workflow automationBuild evaluation frameworks and monitoring systems to ensure AI quality and reliabilityWork directly with customers to understand problems, gather feedback, and validate solutionsCollaborate with product and design to define roadmap and prioritize features based on impactOptimize system performance, cost, and latency as usage scalesContribute to technical architecture decisions and establish engineering best practicesQualifications4+ years of software engineering experience, with at least 1-2 years building AI/ML-powered productsStrong proficiency in Python; experience with TypeScript/JavaScript for full-stack developmentHands-on experience with LLMs in production: prompt engineering, RAG systems, fine-tuning, or agent frameworksSolid understanding of ML fundamentals: embeddings, vector databases, evaluation metrics, and model selectionExperience building and maintaining production systems with high reliability requirementsStrong product intuition, ability to translate ambiguous user needs into concrete technical solutionsExcellent communication skills and comfort working directly with customers and stakeholdersBS/MS in Computer Science, or equivalent practical experienceNice to HaveExperience with AI infrastructure: LangChain, LlamaIndex, vector databases (Pinecone, Weaviate, Chroma)Background in NLP, information retrieval, or search systemsPrevious startup experience, especially as an early engineer or technical co-founderDomain expertise in financial services, legal, healthcare, or other enterprise SaaS verticalsContributions to open-source AI/ML projectsExperience building developer tools or platformsApply for this Job