Applied AI Engineer

San Francisco, California Permanent USD200,000 - USD250,000 per year View Job Description
The team we are partnering with is looking to add an Applied AI Engineer to design, build, and deploy AI-powered products that leverage the latest advances in large language models, agentic workflows, and intelligent automation. This role is ideal for a hands-on builder who enjoys turning cutting-edge AI capabilities into scalable, customer-facing solutions in a fast-paced startup environment.
  • Growing AI startup
  • Hiring an Applied AI Engineer

About Our Client

AI-native startup based in San Francisco developing agentic AI products for enterprise customers. The team is building next-generation AI agents that can reason, plan, and execute complex workflows across business functions. Early-stage environment with significant growth, ownership, and technical impact opportunities.

Job Description

  • Design and build production-grade AI applications powered by state-of-the-art foundation models.
  • Develop agentic workflows, copilots, and AI-powered automation solutions.
  • Experiment rapidly with new models, frameworks, and architectures to find practical solutions.
  • Build Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems and knowledge-driven AI applications.
  • Engineer prompts, evaluation pipelines, and guardrails to improve reliability and performance.
  • Integrate AI services into customer-facing products and internal platforms.
  • Optimize latency, cost, quality, and scalability of AI systems in production.
  • Collaborate closely with product, engineering, and leadership teams to shape our AI strategy.
  • Stay at the forefront of emerging AI capabilities and identify opportunities for innovation.



MPI does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, marital status, or based on an individual's status in any group or class protected by applicable federal, state or local law. MPI encourages applications from minorities, women, the disabled, protected veterans and all other qualified applicants.

The Successful Applicant

  • Strong software engineering experience using Python.
  • Experience building and deploying AI or machine learning applications.
  • Hands-on experience with modern LLM ecosystems (OpenAI, Anthropic, Azure OpenAI, Gemini, or open-source models).
  • Experience building APIs and production-ready backend systems.
  • Strong understanding of prompt engineering, model evaluation, and AI application design.
  • Ability to move quickly, work independently, and thrive in an entrepreneurial environment.
  • Excellent problem-solving and communication skills.

What's on Offer

  • Competitive base salary range: $200k - $250k + bonus + equity.
  • Work directly with founders and influence product strategy.
  • Small team, high ownership, and rapid decision-making.



Contact
Joe Porretta
Quote job ref
JN-072026-7060275

Job summary

Sector
Information Technology
Sub Sector
Infrastructure
Industry
Technology & Telecoms
Location
San Francisco
Contract Type
Permanent
Consultant name
Joe Porretta
Job Reference
JN-072026-7060275