Staff Software Engineer, Applied AI

Reposted 23 Days Ago
Be an Early Applicant
San Francisco, CA, USA
In-Office
Mid level
Angel or VC Firm • Enterprise Web • Software • Financial Services
The Role
Design and build AI-powered product features, develop LLM-based systems, ensure quality, collaborate on product decisions, and optimize performance.
Summary Generated by Built In
About the Role

We're building AI products that solve real problems for real customers. This role sits at the intersection of product and engineering– you'll own features end-to-end, from understanding user problems to shipping production code that scales.

Applied AI product engineering is a new discipline. You won't just be integrating APIs – you'll be designing AI systems that work reliably in production, building evaluation frameworks to measure quality, and iterating rapidly based on real user feedback. You'll work directly with customers to understand their workflows and translate that understanding into product decisions.

This is not a research role. We're looking for engineers who ship. You'll be measured by the products you deliver and the problems you solve, not by papers published or models trained. The best candidates combine deep technical skills with strong product intuition and a relentless focus on user outcomes.

What You'll Do
  • Design, build, and ship AI-powered product features from concept through production deployment

  • Develop and maintain LLM-based systems including RAG pipelines, agents, and workflow automation

  • Build evaluation frameworks and monitoring systems to ensure AI quality and reliability

  • Work directly with customers to understand problems, gather feedback, and validate solutions

  • Collaborate with product and design to define roadmap and prioritize features based on impact

  • Optimize system performance, cost, and latency as usage scales

  • Contribute to technical architecture decisions and establish engineering best practices

Qualifications
  • 4+ years of software engineering experience, with at least 1-2 years building AI/ML-powered products

  • Strong proficiency in Python; experience with TypeScript/JavaScript for full-stack development

  • Hands-on experience with LLMs in production: prompt engineering, RAG systems, fine-tuning, or agent frameworks

  • Solid understanding of ML fundamentals: embeddings, vector databases, evaluation metrics, and model selection

  • Experience building and maintaining production systems with high reliability requirements

  • Strong product intuition, ability to translate ambiguous user needs into concrete technical solutions

  • Excellent communication skills and comfort working directly with customers and stakeholders

  • BS/MS in Computer Science, or equivalent practical experience

Nice to Have
  • Experience with AI infrastructure: LangChain, LlamaIndex, vector databases (Pinecone, Weaviate, Chroma)

  • Background in NLP, information retrieval, or search systems

  • Previous startup experience, especially as an early engineer or technical co-founder

  • Domain expertise in financial services, legal, healthcare, or other enterprise SaaS verticals

  • Contributions to open-source AI/ML projects

  • Experience building developer tools or platforms

Skills Required

  • 4+ years of software engineering experience
  • 1-2 years building AI/ML-powered products
  • Strong proficiency in Python
  • Experience with TypeScript/JavaScript
  • Hands-on experience with LLMs in production
  • Solid understanding of ML fundamentals
  • Experience building production systems
  • BS/MS in Computer Science or equivalent
Am I A Good Fit?
beta
Get Personalized Job Insights.
Our AI-powered fit analysis compares your resume with a job listing so you know if your skills & experience align.

The Company
HQ: San Mateo, CA
50 Employees
Year Founded: 2003

What We Do

Emergence Capital Partners is a venture capital firm that invests in early-stage enterprise B2B software and SaaS companies, aiming to be a valuable partner to companies changing the way the world works.

Similar Jobs

Traba Logo Traba

Staff Software Engineer

Artificial Intelligence • Information Technology • Logistics • Software • 3PL: Third Party Logistics • Industrial • Manufacturing
In-Office
San Francisco, CA, USA
100 Employees
240K-300K Annually

Valence Logo Valence

Staff Software Engineer

Artificial Intelligence • HR Tech • Machine Learning • Natural Language Processing • Software • Conversational AI • Generative AI
In-Office or Remote
3 Locations
50 Employees

Peregrine Technologies, Inc. Logo Peregrine Technologies, Inc.

Staff Software Engineer

Big Data • Information Technology • Software • Analytics
In-Office
San Francisco, CA, USA
200K-275K Annually

Deepgram Logo Deepgram

Software Engineer

Artificial Intelligence • Machine Learning • Natural Language Processing • Software • Conversational AI
In-Office
2 Locations
150 Employees
197K-307K Annually

Similar Companies Hiring

Kepler  Thumbnail
Artificial Intelligence • Fintech • Software
New York, New York
9 Employees
Onshore Thumbnail
Artificial Intelligence • Fintech • Software • Financial Services
New York, New York
60 Employees
Revel.io Thumbnail
Aerospace • Hardware • Robotics • Software
US
50 Employees

Sign up now Access later

Create Free Account

Please log in or sign up to report this job.

Create Free Account