Staff AI Engineer

FoodsmartUnited StatesRemoteFull-timeStaff, 8–12 yearsListed 1 week ago

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About this role

You will

- Own the architecture and implementation of distributed, high-scale backend systems and APIs that serve machine learning models in production.

- Lead technical design for AI integration across product lines, enabling real-time and batch inference workflows using LLMs, transformers, and classification models.

- Drive the fine-tuning and deployment of pre-trained models (e.g., from Hugging Face or OpenAI) for mission-critical business use cases in domains such as healthcare, finance, or operations.

- Integrate external AI services where appropriate and evaluate trade-offs for build vs. buy decisions.

- Define and evolve platform-wide standards for backend engineering, MLOps, model governance, and observability.

- Mentor and support senior and mid-level engineers, both within your team and across functions, to elevate system design and code quality.

- Collaborate with cross-functional leaders in product, ML research, data engineering, and DevOps to align technical initiatives with business goals.

- Influence AI strategy and roadmap, evaluating emerging technologies and frameworks for future adoption.

- Lead root-cause analyses and performance tuning to ensure systems remain reliable, efficient, and scalable.

You are

- A senior technical leader with a demonstrated ability to architect, build, and scale AI-backed systems in production environments.

- Comfortable operating across layers—from backend API services to AI Services and ML model lifecycle management—while driving architectural clarity and system-level thinking.

- Experienced in bridging the gap between research and production, with a strong focus on reliability, maintainability, and business outcomes.

- Skilled at leading cross-team initiatives, guiding technical direction, and fostering a high-trust engineering culture.

- Able to influence without authority, collaborating across teams to align on complex technical trade-offs.

- Deeply invested in engineering excellence, with a strong bias toward automation, observability, and security.

You have

- 8+ years of professional software engineering experience, including 2+ years at the Staff Engineer level or equivalent

- 4+ years of experience with backend development in TypeScript, Node.js, and SQL-based RDBMS (e.g., PostgreSQL, MySQL)

- 1+ years deploying ML/AI models to production, with hands-on experience fine-tuning LLMs or transformer-based models

- Deep understanding of system architecture, cloud infrastructure (AWS), and scalable API design

- Strong experience with Data Pipeline tooling (e.g., Docker, Kubernetes, dbt, Dagster) and model deployment practices

- Proven leadership in setting technical direction, mentoring engineers, and driving cross-team projects to completion

- Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field

Role: Staff AI Engineer
Location: United States (Remote)
Base Salary Range: $190,000-$210,000
Our salary ranges are determined by role, level, and location. Individual pay is determined by work location, job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training.