Senior AI Engineer

Job Summary

Drata is advancing the frontier of compliance automation by integrating intelligent AI capabilities into its platform. We are seeking a Senior AI Engineer to help design, build, and scale robust, high-impact AI systems that improve operational efficiency, enhance decision-making, and support trust-critical enterprise workflows. This role focuses on solving complex, real-world problems with agentic AI, LLMs, and intelligent reasoning systems, including automating questionnaire answering and other compliance-related workflows. You will work on creating generalizable AI solutions that can be applied across multiple products and domains, collaborating with cross-functional teams to bring cutting-edge research into production-ready systems. As a Senior AI Engineer, you will own the end-to-end design, implementation, and evolution of AI-driven systems embedded directly into Drata’s core platform. Your work will focus on building generalizable, reusable AI capabilities rather than one-off features, enabling multiple product surfaces and workflows across compliance and security.

What You'll Do

• Build Agentic & Intelligent AI Systems
• Design and implement LLM-powered systems capable of multi-step reasoning, evidence grounding, and decision support in high-trust domains.
• Develop agentic workflows that combine retrieval, tool use, structured reasoning, and human oversight.
• Create interactive AI experiences that allow users to engage naturally with complex compliance and risk data.
• Automated Reasoning Over Regulations & Evidence
• Build AI systems that reason over structured and unstructured data to support regulatory interpretation, control alignment, and evidence validation.
• Ensure AI outputs are traceable, explainable, and auditable, meeting the expectations of enterprise customers and auditors.
• Production-Grade AI Architecture
• Arcitect and deploy scalable LLM + retrieval + agent systems in production environments.
• Optimize for latency, cost, reliability, and evaluation in real-world enterprise workloads.
• Partner with platform, security, product teams, and other application development teams with diverse skill sets to operationalize AI safely and effectively.
• Responsible & Trustworthy AI
• Embed human-in-the-loop workflows, confidence thresholds, and safety guardrails into AI systems.
• Ensure privacy-preserving data handling, robust failure modes, and transparent behavior aligned with Drata’s trust principles.

What You'll Bring

• Experience: 7+ years of hands-on software engineering experience; 2+ years specifically in ML/AI engineering.
• Programming Languages: Proficiency in Python; TypeScript experience is a plus, especially for production AI system integrations.
• Retrieval & Vector Stores: Familiarity with vector databases (Pinecone, Chroma, FAISS, etc.) and RAG system design.
• LLM & AI Systems: Proven experience building and shipping LLM-based applications in production, including embeddings, RAG, agent frameworks, prompt engineering, and evaluation.
• Production Expertise: Track record of taking AI systems from concept to production, designing scalable, maintainable solutions.
• Problem Solving: Ability to decompose complex tasks into agentic workflows and reason over high-stakes, structured, and unstructured data.
• Collaboration: Experience working cross-functionally with product, compliance, security, engineering teams, and partnering with other application development teams with diverse skill sets.

Bonus Qualifications

• Experience in compliance, security, risk, or audit domains.
• Familiarity with Snowflake-based analytics, knowledge graphs, or enterprise data platforms.
• Experience partnering with non-technical stakeholders such as compliance or GRC teams.

Why Join The Drata Team?

The best way to understand the Driver’s Mindset is to see it in action. We’re an award-winning, mission-driven team of 600+ people worldwide, united by a culture that values trust, speed, and continuous growth. See the Speed: Watch our CEO, Adam Markowitz, discuss the hyper-growth journey, from $0 to $100M ARR in just four years.
Hear the Voice of the Team: Explore our "Life at Drata" page for employee testimonials on our collaborative and the growth opportunities available.
Experience the Impact: See why we are consistently recognized on Fortune's Best Workplaces lists.
Connect with Us on Socials: LinkedIn - follow us for company updates, employee stories, and career news.

Our Culture & Work Style

At Drata, we’re not just building software - we’re building a mindset. Everything we do springs from:
Be a Driver (Owner‑Operator Mentality): Own your work. Improve relentlessly. Deliver results.
Move at Drata Speed (Precision & Velocity): Fast decisions. Quick learning. Immediate impact.
Stay Mission-Driven (Customer‑Obsessed): Challenge assumptions. Deliver value. Stay hungry.

Job Location

While we’re ideally looking for someone who can join us in a hybrid capacity from our San Francisco office, we know great talent isn’t limited by zip code. We’ll consider remote candidates across the U.S. who are a strong match for the role.

How We Support You

• Shared Success: We provide stock equity to ensure that as the company grows, you share directly in that success.
• Health & Wellness: Up to 100% employer-paid premiums for medical, dental, and vision coverage for employees and their dependents, along with comprehensive wellness benefits and healthcare concierge services designed to support your needs beyond traditional insurance.
• Financial Well-being: A comprehensive suite of financial benefits, including a 401(k) plan, company-paid life and disability insurance, tax-advantaged spending accounts, and a range of discounted voluntary offerings to help you customize and strengthen your overall financial position.
• Family Support: We want to support you in life's most important moments, so we offer a paid Parental Leave policy, after six months of employment. Employees also receive access to Kindbody fertility and family-building benefits and dedicated leave specialists who help guide you through the entire process.
• Growth & Development: Generous annual stipends for both professional and personal development, empowering you to invest in your continued growth. You’ll also have access to a wide range of internal learning opportunities, ensuring you can build new skills, deepen your expertise, and advance your career with confidence.
• Time Off & Flexibility: We believe that to do your best work, you should get the time you need for rest, rejuvenation and recovery. Drata offers a flexible vacation policy, paid holidays, and other perks to recharge.

Compensation

This role will receive a competitive base salary, benefits, and/or stock, typically in the form of Restricted Stock Units (RSUs). The applicable salary range for each US-based role is based on where the employee works and is aligned to one of 3 tiers based on the cost of labor for that geographic area. The expected ranges for this role are set forth below, subject to change:

• Tier 1: $192,000 - $259,800
• Tier 2: $172,800 - $233,800
• Tier 3: $153,600 - $207,800