Applied AI Engineer

Paraform; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

An innovative AI company in San Francisco is looking for an Applied AI Engineer to develop LLM-driven features aimed at enhancing interactions on their platform. The ideal candidate should have 2-5 years of experience in AI startups, with strong Python and Typescript skills. Responsibilities include owning systems from design to deployment, collaborating closely with product and engineering teams, and creating robust evaluation frameworks. This position offers an exciting opportunity to integrate AI deeply into product experiences.

Qualifications

• 2 - 5 years of experience in an AI-focused startup environment.
• Experience with products used by a large user base.
• Strong experience with Python and Typescript.

Responsibilities

• Develop LLM-driven features to improve platform interactions.
• Own end-to-end system management from design to deployment.
• Collaborate with teams to release impactful AI capabilities.
• Design evaluation frameworks for real-world performance.
• Define best practices for operational production AI systems.

Skills

Python

Typescript

LLM-powered applications

Agentic workflows

Traditional ML techniques

Job description

What we’re looking for

We’re looking for an Applied AI Engineer with 2-5 years of experience building and shipping AI systems used by real people. You’re comfortable working with modern LLM-based systems and agentic workflows, and you know how to turn powerful models into reliable product features. You have strong product judgment and think deeply about tradeoffs between LLM approaches and traditional ML when designing solutions. You care about evaluation, iteration speed, and making sure AI systems actually drive measurable business impact.

Experience building LLM-powered applications, retrieval systems, tool-using agents, or AI-driven automation is a plus. Familiarity with traditional ML techniques such as ranking, recommendation, or classification is helpful when designing hybrid systems that balance performance, cost, and reliability.

What you’ll do

• Develop LLM-driven features such as retrieval pipelines, agentic workflows, and AI-powered automation that improve how recruiters and companies interact on the platform.
• Own systems end-to-end, from data pipelines and prompt or model design to deployment, monitoring, and iteration in production.
• Work closely with product, ML engineers, and full-stack teams to ship AI capabilities that directly move marketplace metrics.
• Design evaluation frameworks that measure real-world performance, reliability, and business outcomes, not just offline model quality.
• Help define best practices for building and operating production AI systems at Paraform, balancing model quality, cost, latency, and maintainability.
• Raise the bar for how AI is integrated into product experiences across the platform.

Who you are

• 2 - 5 years of experience at a growing, AI native startup (series A - D)

• Worked on products that have scales to a large number of users (not just for a single enterprise customer)

• Strong Python and Typescript experience

• You've built agentic systems that power real business or user outcomes

• You thrive in ambiguous, 0 to 1 environments

• You can explain technical tradeoffs to non-technical partners