Senior AI Platform Engineer

About the role

Afresh, the AI platform for grocery, began by tackling the most complex problem in the industry: fresh, and has evolved into the core AI platform for grocers. Leveraging proprietary AI designed for high-volatility environments, we empower partners like Albertsons, Meijer, and Wakefern to drive smarter decisions across their entire enterprise.

What You’ll Do

• Build the knowledge & retrieval layer
• Design and operate the knowledge graph and ontology that capture how grocery data relates.
• Build the retrieval systems (vector, graph, and structured) that feed the right context to our models — so grounding is reliable, not lucky.
• Build and serve the agent platform
• Build LLM-powered agents (tool-use, multi-step reasoning, orchestration) and the serving infrastructure to run them reliably and cost-effectively.
• Build the tools, abstractions, and interfaces other engineers depend on — a platform, not one-off features.
• Own evaluation, quality, and the data foundation
• Stand up eval sets, LLM-as-judge harnesses, tracing, and observability, plus the metrics (faithfulness, accuracy, hallucination rate, latency, cost) that tell us whether a change helped or hurt.
• Build the pipelines, data products, and experimentation on Databricks/MLflow that take work from prototype to production — and partner with the engineers deploying our AI in the field to harden what works into reusable capabilities.

Nice to Have

• Knowledge graphs, ontologies, or semantic layers in production; graph databases.
• Vector stores (pgvector, Pinecone, Weaviate, etc.) and hybrid search.
• MCP or similar tool/context protocols; agent frameworks (e.g., LangGraph).
• MLOps and model serving at scale; experimentation and observability tooling for LLM systems.
• Experience in grocery, retail, or other complex enterprise data domains.

Our Tech Stack

• Python, PySpark, dbt
• Databricks (Delta Lake, Unity Catalog, MLflow)
• Astronomer (Airflow) for orchestration
• LLMs and agents (Claude), retrieval over vector + graph stores, MCP tooling, eval and observability harnesses
• Claude, GitHub, Shortcut, Notion for development workflows

Why Afresh

• We're a mission-driven company that eliminates hundreds of millions of pounds of food waste in grocery stores every year — your platform powers products with direct, visible impact.
• Build the foundation the rest of the product stands on: high-leverage, 0-to-1 work where your abstractions make the whole team faster.
• Be part of an engineering culture that's genuinely AI-forward — we want to be on the bleeding edge of agentic systems, not watching from the sidelines.
• Senior team, high trust, and real ownership at a pivotal inflection point for how Afresh scales.
• Collaborative, supportive environment & awesome people :)

Job Details

This is a hybrid role based in the San Francisco office (2 days/week)

This position is not eligible for company sponsorship.

Salary Range in U.S.: $156,060 - $231,140

At Afresh, our mission to eliminate food waste starts with investing in our people. We provide a comprehensive support system designed to help you do your best work while maintaining a healthy, balanced life.

• Comprehensive Health & Wellness: Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage for you and your family, with the majority of premiums covered by Afresh. We also provide dedicated mental health support and counseling services.
• Invested in Your Future: Competitive base salary, meaningful equity (U.S. employees), and a 401(k) program with a generous company match.
• Flexible & Modern Workspace: Whether you work from home or a local office, we support your setup with a home office stipend and "Coworking Wallets" for flexible workspace access.
• Growth-Obsessed Culture: We believe in continuous learning. Every employee receives an annual professional development budget to master new skills and grow their career at Afresh.
• Holistic Monthly Stipends: Beyond your paycheck, we provide monthly stipends for "Betterment" (wellness/lifestyle) and telecommunications to ensure you have what you need to thrive.
• Time to Recharge: Flexible paid time off to take the time you need to recharge.

Afresh provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, genetics, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, marital status, pregnancy or related condition, or any other basis protected by law.

Here at Afresh, many of our employees work remotely provided that they reside in one of the following states: AL, AR, CA, CO, FL, GA, IL, KY, MA, MI, MT, MO, NV, NJ, NY, NC, OR, PA, TX, WA, UT, VA, WI.