Artificial Intelligence Engineer

AustinWorks; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 200,000 - 300,000; Full time

Job summary

AustinWorks in San Francisco is seeking an AI Engineer to help design, evaluate, and productionize AI agent systems. This is not a model training role; you'll focus on reliability and measurable impact in real-world workflows.

You will work across experimentation, tooling, and infrastructure to enable agents to reason, act, and improve in production. The role offers ownership and direct product impact in an early-stage, B2B SaaS environment.

Qualifications

• 2–4+ years of hands-on ML/AI experience in applied roles.
• Strong Python and production systems experience.
• Experience owning end-to-end systems from prototype to production.
• Clear communicator able to reason about tradeoffs.

Responsibilities

• Build end-to-end evaluation frameworks to measure and improve agent performance.
• Experiment with modern agentic techniques (multi-agent systems, feedback loops, reasoning-from-feedback).
• Design and implement lightweight orchestration layers, services, and internal tools that enable agents to operate reliably.
• Translate emerging research and ideas into practical production experiments.
• Work closely with product and leadership to ship quickly and iterate based on real customer usage.

Skills

Python

Production systems

ML/AI experience

End-to-end ownership

Communication

Ambiguity tolerance

Education

Advanced degree in AI/ML

Job description

AI Engineer (Agent Systems)

San Francisco (hybrid / in-office preferred)

Early-stage, post-PMF (~20 people)

B2B SaaS / AI / Enterprise workflows

$200-$300k base salary

About the Company

We’re building domain-specific AI agents that automate complex, high-stakes enterprise workflows in a regulated, trillion-dollar industry. Our systems are used in real production environments by large enterprise customers and are already driving meaningful revenue growth.

The company is well‑funded, growing quickly, and led by a highly technical founding team with prior startup and big‑tech experience. This is a hands‑on role with real ownership and direct product impact.

The Role

We’re looking for an AI Engineer to help design, evaluate, and productionize AI agent systems. This is not a model training or research role. You’ll focus on making agents reliable, measurable, and useful in real‑world workflows.

You’ll work across experimentation, tooling, and infrastructure to help agents reason, act, and improve over time in production.

What You’ll Do

• Build end-to-end evaluation frameworks to measure and improve agent performance
• Experiment with modern agentic techniques (e.g. multi‑agent systems, feedback loops, reasoning‑from‑feedback)
• Design and implement lightweight orchestration layers, services, and internal tools that enable agents to operate reliably
• Translate emerging research and ideas into practical production experiments
• Work closely with product and leadership to ship quickly and iterate based on real customer usage

What We’re Looking For

• Strong Python experience and comfort building production systems
• 2–4+ years of hands‑on ML / AI experience, ideally in applied or product-focused roles
• Experience owning systems end‑to‑end, from early prototypes to production
• Clear communicator who can reason through tradeoffs and explain decisions
• High ownership mindset — comfortable operating with ambiguity and moving fast

Nice to Have

• Experience at an early‑stage startup (0→1 or first ~30 engineers)
• Background in B2B SaaS or enterprise software
• Prior founder or early engineer experience
• Advanced degree in AI/ML (can offset years of experience)

What This Is Not

• Not a research scientist or paper‑focused role
• Not primarily model training or fine‑tuning
• Not a slow‑paced or low‑ownership environment

Why This Role

• Real production impact with enterprise customers
• Significant ownership over core AI systems
• Opportunity to help define how AI agents work in high‑stakes workflows
• Strong growth trajectory and meaningful career upside