Staff AI Engineer
Our client operates in the AI systems design sector, focusing on integrating artificial intelligence with human workflows. They address the challenge of creating AI agents that function effectively in real-world enterprise environments, ensuring reliability, security, and scalability. The company emphasizes rapid delivery of production-ready AI solutions within 30 to 45 days, reflecting a commitment to ownership and technical craftsmanship.
About the Opportunity
The Staff AI Engineer leads the design and delivery of complex AI and machine learning systems from research through to production. This role is critical for defining AI architecture, establishing engineering standards, and driving technical leadership within cross-functional teams. The engineer influences AI strategy, ensures scalable and reliable system development, and mentors other engineers to elevate the team’s technical capabilities.
Responsibilities
- Lead the end-to-end design and implementation of complex AI/ML systems, including architecture decisions
- Develop and maintain scalable ML platforms, pipelines, and infrastructure
- Establish and promote AI engineering standards and best practices
- Collaborate with product, engineering, and leadership to align AI strategies with business goals
- Communicate AI tradeoffs and technical considerations to technical and non-technical stakeholders
- Lead design reviews and foster engineering rigor
- Mentor junior and mid-level engineers through coaching and code reviews
- Own critical, high-impact projects focusing on reliability, cost, and safety
Requirements
- 7+ years of professional software engineering experience with 4+ years focused on AI/ML production systems
- Expertise in software engineering languages such as Python and system design for scalability and maintainability
- Deep knowledge of cloud platforms, especially AWS services and GenAI offerings
- Proven experience designing and deploying complex agentic AI systems in production
- Mastery of AI frameworks, orchestration tools, and evaluation frameworks for LLM applications
- Understanding of AI safety, responsible AI, prompt injection defenses, and PII handling
- Experience with RAG pipelines, including chunking, embedding models, vector databases, and retrieval techniques
- API design and integration experience at scale
- Advanced skills in cost optimization for AI models
- Proficiency with Docker and Kubernetes for containerized deployments
- Expert use of AI-forward coding tools such as Claude Code and Cursor
Pay
Salary range: $177,375 – $209,625 USD