AI & ML Engineer

About the role

Topline is the AI growth platform for high-trust service companies. We combine the speed of AI-native agents with the judgment of vetted human experts to help professional service firms—legal, consulting, healthcare, finance—grow without sacrificing their reputation. We're not building another spam cannon. We're building a system where AI does the grunt work and humans protect what matters: trust, relationships, and outcomes. Our platform replaces 5-7 scattered tools with one unified system, and our pay-for-performance model means clients only pay when we deliver real results. We're a venture-backed startup at an inflection point: product-market fit is proven, we're cash-flow positive, and now we're scaling. If you want to build AI that actually ships value—not demos—this is the role.

We're looking for an AI/ML Engineer to own and evolve the intelligence layer powering Topline's four AI agents: Front Desk Agent — Handles inbound requests, answers questions, routes signals; Outreach Agent — Personalizes prospecting, adapts to engagement signals, knows when to hand off to humans; Marketing Agent — Plans and optimizes campaigns using historical performance and live data; Insights Agent — Translates raw data into forecasts and recommendations in plain language. You'll work at the intersection of applied ML, LLM orchestration, and production systems. This isn't research for research's sake—it's building AI that runs 24/7 for paying customers who judge us by outcomes.

Responsibilities

• Build and improve AI agents that handle real customer workflows—outreach personalization, lead scoring, intent detection, conversation routing
• Design and implement LLM pipelines including prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and multi-step reasoning chains
• Develop our proprietary scoring models (like Topline Rate—our "Zestimate for B2B prospects") using signals like hiring activity, funding, tech installs, and engagement patterns
• Create human-in-the-loop systems that know when to escalate to human review—balancing automation with brand safety
• Ship production ML infrastructure including model serving, monitoring, feedback loops, and A/B testing frameworks
• Collaborate with product and operations to translate messy real-world problems into ML solutions that actually work
• Improve data pipelines for enrichment, deduplication, and signal extraction across millions of professional profiles

Requirements

• 3+ years of experience building ML/AI systems in production (not just notebooks)
• Strong Python skills; experience with ML frameworks (PyTorch, TensorFlow, or similar)
• Hands-on experience with LLMs—prompt engineering, fine-tuning, or building applications on top of GPT-4, Claude, or open-source models
• Understanding of NLP fundamentals: embeddings, classification, entity extraction, semantic search
• Experience with vector databases (Pinecone, Weaviate, pgvector) and RAG architectures
• Comfortable with cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and containerization
• Ability to ship iteratively—we value working software over perfect plans

Qualifications

• Experience with sales/marketing tech, lead scoring, or B2B data enrichment
• Background in building conversational AI or agent-based systems
• Familiarity with workflow orchestration (Temporal, Airflow, or similar)
• Experience at an early-stage startup where you wore multiple hats
• Understanding of email deliverability, domain reputation, or anti-spam systems

Skills

• Python, Node.js
• PostgreSQL, Redis, vector databases
• AWS (primary cloud)
• OpenAI, Anthropic APIs (with room to evolve)
• React frontend

Pay

Competitive salary + equity — Real ownership in a company at an inflection point.

Benefits

• Charleston lifestyle — Work from our Mount Pleasant