AI Engineer, Sr. - Remote

## About the Company Supernal helps small and medium-sized businesses hire and deploy their first AI employee. The company develops AI teammates powered by intelligent, agentic workflows and deploys them through its proprietary platform. Rather than providing standalone AI tools, Supernal focuses on delivering production-ready AI Employees designed to generate measurable value for real businesses. Its AI Platform Engineers, known internally as Masons, build the systems that power these customer-facing AI Employees. ## About the Role Supernal is seeking a Senior AI Engineer to work on critical customer implementations and build production software that powers AI Employees in real-world business environments. The role combines backend engineering, system architecture, external integrations, conversational AI, agentic workflows, and client delivery. You will build services, data models, CRUD applications, integrations, and AI systems capable of handling live users, multi-turn conversations, real-time requirements, and complex workflows. As a senior technical owner, you will translate customer requirements and Statements of Work (SOWs) into production systems, manage delivery timelines and technical tradeoffs, and help ensure successful customer outcomes. This is a hands-on engineering role focused on building, debugging, deploying, and maintaining production systems while helping establish strong engineering practices. ### Key Responsibilities * Build production software using Supernal's proprietary platform, including backend services, data models, and CRUD applications.* Develop and maintain integrations with external APIs, webhooks, third-party tools, and data sources.* Build systems that allow AI Employees to interact safely with external services.* Design, implement, and deploy conversational AI agents with multi-turn workflows, state management, and tool usage.* Own end-to-end technical delivery for high-priority customer implementations.* Translate customer requirements and SOWs into technical designs, execution plans, and deliverables.* Make architectural decisions across application design, API integrations, LLM orchestration, RAG, and workflow decomposition.* Address real-time voice system challenges including latency, interruptions, fallbacks, error handling, and failure recovery.* Develop automated unit, integration, and end-to-end tests.* Implement reliable error handling and distinguish between retryable and fatal failures.* Surface meaningful error messages and prevent silent failures.* Debug complex production issues involving agents, prompts, integrations, and external dependencies.* Partner with delivery and product leadership to manage timelines, scope, and technical tradeoffs.* Review technical implementations for quality, scalability, reliability, and maintainability.* Define, document, and improve engineering best practices for building and deploying reliable AI Employees. ### Required Qualifications * 4+ years of experience as a software engineer, automation engineer, or systems builder shipping production systems.* Strong understanding of multi-turn conversational design, including state management, context windows, interruption handling, and recovery.* Experience working with real-time production systems and latency-sensitive workflows.* Experience with streaming audio, fallback mechanisms, and unreliable external APIs.* Hands-on experience deploying voice agents using platforms such as ElevenLabs, Retell, Nextiva, or comparable technologies.* Experience integrating voice agents with telephony and streaming audio systems.* Strong automated testing practices, including unit, integration, and end-to-end testing.* Solid software engineering fundamentals, including error handling, retry strategies, separation of concerns, and clean interfaces.* Experience owning technical delivery outcomes, including timelines, reliability, and customer success.* Deep experience with agentic architectures and production API integrations.* Understanding of LLM orchestration, prompt engineering, function calling, and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG).* Ability to prototype quickly while delivering production-quality systems with testing, monitoring, error handling, and operational documentation.* Strong debugging and problem-solving abilities, including troubleshooting complex agent behavior and API failures.* Excellent written and verbal English communication skills.* Ability to clearly explain technical decisions, tradeoffs, and implementation approaches to technical and non-technical stakeholders. ### Technical Areas * Backend services and APIs* Agentic AI architectures* Conversational AI* LLM orchestration* Prompt engineering* Function calling* Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG)* Voice agents* Telephony and streaming audio* API and webhook integrations* Automated testing* Real-time systems* Production debugging and reliability ### Compensation The source listing specifies a contractor or EOR full-time employment arrangement with a rate of $35–$50 per hour. ### Work Arrangement This is a remote role open globally. The position reports to the Director of Engineering and may be structured as either a contractor engagement or EOR full-time employment. ## Equal Opportunity Supernal is committed to providing equal employment opportunities and fostering an inclusive and respectful workplace. Employment decisions are made without discrimination based on sex, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, color, national origin, religion, disability, age, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.