Applied AI Engineer

Rainier Recruiting; Seattle (WA); Hybrid; USD 200,000 - 250,000; Full time

Job summary

Rainier Recruiting in Seattle is seeking an Applied AI Engineer to build the intelligent AI layer of our agentic consumer experience. This senior role applies state-of-the-art research to large-scale products, with autonomy and ambiguity as a norm.

You will contribute across prompting, multi-step workflows, tool-calling architectures, and memory systems, while delivering production-grade solutions and rigorous evaluation. Office-based, hybrid setup with a focus on execution.

Qualifications

• Master's degree or equivalent hands-on experience that demonstrates the same depth.
• 5+ years of experience training large-scale deep learning models and LLMs — this is a floor, not a target.
• Shipped large-scale AI systems to real users, not prototypes or internal tools.
• Experience going well beyond building generic LLM wrappers — genuine depth in the model layer itself.
• The ability to translate research into reliable, safe, production-grade systems.
• Experience building evaluation frameworks and harnesses for agentic workflows.
• A generalist mindset — operate broadly across the AI stack, not a narrow specialist.

Responsibilities

• Work on the agentic AI layer of our consumer experience.
• Role includes prompting and orchestration for multi-step workflows.
• Design tool-calling architectures with guardrails.
• Develop consent-aware long-term memory systems.
• Build evaluation frameworks for model selection, quality, cost, safety, and determinism.
• Operate across the AI stack with autonomy in a small, fast-moving team.

Skills

Deep learning

LLMs

Production-grade systems

Evaluation frameworks

Autonomous agentic workflows

Strong communication

Education

Master's degree in CS or related

Tools

Temporal

Braintrust

LangSmith

AWS

Job description

Applied AI Engineer Location: Seattle (hybrid) Type: Full-time Reports to: Head of Engineering Compensation: $200, 000–$250, 000 base salary, plus a 15–20% target bonus, plus equity. We'll walk you through the full structure in process. Our process: Initial screen → take-home exercise and presentation → final round with onsite.

About Us

We're building an agentic, AI-native consumer product that will be used by millions of people to make complex, high-consideration purchases online. Today's tools for these kinds of decisions are fragmented, transactional, and introduce friction at every step. We exist to know our users deeply, shoulder that complexity, and apply real judgment on their behalf, so these moments become more personal and more valuable over time. We are building something that has not existed before, and we are a small, senior team (currently ~15, growing to ~28 by year-end), backed by one of the world's largest consumer companies. We are here to do the best work of our careers.

Role overview

We are seeking an Applied AI Engineer to build out the intelligent AI layer of our agentic consumer experience. This is a senior role that takes cutting-edge techniques and state-of-the-art research and applies them to delightful, large-scale consumer products. We're a small, fast-moving team right now, heads-down on shipping. We're looking for someone additive from day one: broadly capable, comfortable operating with real autonomy, and energized by ambiguity rather than needing it resolved for them. You will work on Our agentic AI layer, including:

• Prompting and orchestration
• Multi-step, stateful agentic workflows
• Tool-calling architectures with clear guardrails
• Consent-aware long-term memory systems
• Persona extraction and structured context modeling
• Autonomous purchase and transaction optimization logic
• Real-time monitoring and autonomous intervention systems
• Evaluation frameworks for model selection, quality, cost, safety, and determinism

Qualifications

We're looking for someone who has:

• A Master's degree (or higher) in Computer Science or a related technical field, or equivalent hands-on experience that demonstrates the same depth
• 5+ years of experience training large-scale deep learning models and LLMs — this is a floor, not a target
• Shipped large-scale AI systems to real users, not prototypes or internal tools
• Experience going well beyond building generic LLM wrappers — genuine depth in the model layer itself
• The ability to translate research into reliable, safe, production-grade systems
• Experience building evaluation frameworks and harnesses for agentic workflows
• A generalist mindset — we need someone who can operate broadly across the AI stack, not a narrow specialist in one sub-domain
• Strong communication skills and the judgment to operate with real autonomy in a small, fast-moving team

We prefer candidates with experience in our technologies and architectural patterns, which include:

• Frontier language models (commercial and open-weight)
• Cloud and serverless infrastructure (AWS, Vercel, etc.)
• Durable workflow engines (Temporal, etc.)
• LLM observability/evaluation platforms (Braintrust, LangSmith, etc.)
• Persistent memory systems
• Relational and vector databases for durable state
• AI runtimes with streaming and tool execution

How we work

Company of builders. Everyone here operates like an owner, with high autonomy and high accountability. Generalists over specialists. At our stage, we need people who can move across problems, not narrowly scoped experts. In-person. We build together in Seattle, hybrid.

Rainier Recruiting is an equal opportunity employer and service provider and does not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, gender, gender identity, national origin, citizenship status, sexual orientation, disability, political affiliation or belief, or any other protected class. We are committed to the principles of Equal Opportunity Employment and are dedicated to making employment decisions based on merit and value, for ourselves, our client companies, and for the candidates we represent. We engage in socially conscious business practices and believe that diverse, equitable, inclusive, and non-biased talent and recruitment processes are foundational to the success of every organization that we partner with.