Foundational AI Engineer — Build Production LLM Systems

Numeral; New York (NY); On-site; USD 180,000 - 250,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Health insurance

Wellness perks (Headspace, Peloton)

401(k) matching

Office lunch and snacks

Team offsites

Job summary

Numeral is building an AI-native tax platform and seeking a Foundational AI Engineer to own the technical foundations and end-to-end AI workflows. You’ll design tool-calling agents, orchestration layers, and MCP-style integrations while scaling backend services for real-world customer needs.

You will collaborate with product, design, and data teams, establishing engineering best practices, AI safety norms, and a culture of ownership as Numeral grows rapidly in a customer-centric way.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of experience building products in high-growth environments.
• 2+ years of experience building with LLMs.
• Avid use of state-of-the-art AI development tools such as Cursor and Claude Code.
• Fluency with backend technologies like PostgreSQL, Redis, and cloud services (AWS preferred).
• Experience with frontend development, especially TypeScript and its ecosystem.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and operate production AI systems, including tool-calling agents, model orchestration layers, and RAG.
• Implement and maintain AI integrations using modern frameworks, MCP servers, and external model providers.
• Build and evolve scalable backend services and APIs that power automated workflows and customer-facing features.
• Think in automation and workflows: design systems using tools like n8n, Claude Code-style agents, or similar orchestration approaches.
• Make architectural decisions that balance latency, cost, reliability, and iteration speed.
• Own infrastructure, observability, and performance for both AI and non-AI services.
• Collaborate closely with product, design, and data teams to ship features that solve real customer problems.
• Help define engineering best practices, AI safety/reliability norms, and our overall technical culture.

Skills

LLM development

Backend engineering

Frontend development

Cloud services

Communication

Startup mindset

Tools

Cursor

Claude Code

Job description

Numeral is building an AI-native tax platform and seeking a Foundational AI Engineer to own the technical foundations and end-to-end AI workflows. You’ll design tool-calling agents, orchestration layers, and MCP-style integrations while scaling backend services for real-world customer needs.

You will collaborate with product, design, and data teams, establishing engineering best practices, AI safety norms, and a culture of ownership as Numeral grows rapidly in a customer-centric way.