Lead Engineer, Applied AI

Circle; United States; Remote; USD 160,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Circle is seeking a Lead Engineer for its Applied AI team to develop innovative AI solutions enhancing user experiences across its platform. This fully remote role requires strong proficiency in Ruby on Rails and significant experience in AI technologies, where you will lead a small team and oversee impactful projects.

Benefits

35 days of PTO annually

Paid sabbatical after 5 years

100% medical coverage for you and your family

Home office stipend

Learning & development stipend

Annual bonus potential

Company retreats globally

Qualifications

• 8+ years experience as a full-stack engineer on complex web applications.
• Strong understanding of NLP, ML, and LLM technologies.
• Experience leading a team of engineers.

Responsibilities

• Spearhead development of AI solutions to enhance user experience.
• Lead and manage the Applied AI engineering team.
• Own the end-to-end architecture and technical strategy for AI solutions.

Skills

Ruby on Rails

MySQL/Postgresql

ReactJS

NLP

ML

LLM fundamentals

Tools

OpenAI

Hugging Face

LangChain

Job description

Circle is building the world’s leading all-in-one platform for online communities. We make it possible for creators, coaches, educators, and businesses to bring together their audience with engaging discussions, live streams, events, chat, courses, and payments — all in one place, all under their own brand.

We’re proud to be a fully remote company of around 180 (and growing!) team members from 30+ countries around the world. We seek exceptional individuals around the world, set them up to do the best work of their lives, and in turn, create a meaningful impact in their own lives. We don't track hours, but we do manage for high expectations very closely. We collaborate across time zones, are highly async, and like to document a lot.

Twice a year, we bring the whole company together in beautiful places around the world for our company offsites. So far, we’ve hosted offsites in Turkey, Portugal, Mexico, Thailand, Colombia, Italy, Ireland, and more, with still more to come!

About the role

The Applied AI team at Circle is at the forefront of leveraging AI to drive innovation across our company.

We're looking for a Lead Engineer, Applied AI to spearhead the development of AI solutions that enhance user experiences across our platform, both internally and externally. You’ll also lead and manage the Applied AI engineering team, help organize & coordinate work, and serve as a people manager.

If you're passionate about working on real production use cases of large language models (LLMs) and want to contribute to transformative AI applications, this role is for you.

What you'll be doing

• Work autonomously on a product built in Ruby on Rails backend and React front-end.
• Ship full-stack AI projects end to end --exciting projects such as AI Agents, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), Structured Extraction, internal tooling for customer-facing teams, and build infrastructure for LLM inference.
• Work closely with Circle's leaders throughout the feature design process.
• Work closely with our designers to create a world-class user experience.
• Own the end-to-end architecture and technical strategy for AI solutions.
• Hire, onboard, and lead a small team of senior engineers, supporting their growth and ensuring high-impact execution.
• Improve processes, tools, and systems to scale AI solutions across Circle.
• Optimize AI infrastructure for performance, reliability, and cost-efficiency.
• Help us stay up-to-date with the cutting-edge AI research, techniques, and tools.
• Foster a bias for action, prioritizing speed of iteration without compromising on the quality of code or user experience.

What you'll need to be successful

• 8+ years experience working as a full-stack engineer on complex web applications with significant scale (100k+ rpm, 100GB+ databases).
• Strong proficiency in Ruby on Rails, MySQL/Postgresql, ReactJS. Familiarity with both frontend and backend is necessary, but a high degree of proficiency in both is not a requirement.
• Strong understanding of NLP, ML, and LLM fundamentals - including modern LLM technologies, RAG, and prompt engineering techniques.
• Hands-on experience with AI frameworks and tools, such as OpenAI, Anthropic, Hugging Face, LangChain, and vector databases.
• You have experience leading a team of engineers, especially in growth-focused environments.
• A desire to work in an environment which values speed of iteration and individual autonomy, while also embracing personal accountability and the ability to collaborate effectively as part of a dynamic team.
• Comfortable in a fast-paced environment with a certain level of ambiguity, especially when learning and picking up new technologies when projects require it.
• You have deployed at least one AI Agent to production, with a deep understanding of the entire development lifecycle --from initial concept to final deployment with customer feedback loops.

$160,000 - $180,000 USD per year

The cash compensation range shown is a starting point. In addition to equity, benefits and perks, your cash compensation is subject to an annual review and increase on a once per year basis.

The fun stuff

• Fully remote:work from anywhere in the world!
• Autonomy and trust to do your job:we care about outcomes over everything else.
• Paid time away:all employees are given 35 days of PTO annually. We also offer a paid sabbatical after 5 years.
• Generous U.S. benchmarked compensationand startup equity no matter where you are in the world.*
• Awesome medical coveragewith 100% coverage for you and your family, or medical reimbursement options where applicable!*
• Parental leavefor parents expanding their family, or just starting one.
• Home office stipendto help you get up and running.
• Learning & development stipendto help you level up your professional skills.
• Annual bonus potentialfor roles that don't already receive variable income or commission.
• Company retreats:Twice a year, the Circle team gets together for a fully paid company retreat in incredible places around the world! We’ve had past retreats in Colombia, Portugal, and Mexico, with more planned on the horizon.

*Your role, location and unique circumstance may affect this.

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

As a fully-remote international company, diversity is baked into our DNA. Here’s how our CEO, Sid Yadav, frames our hiring mission: “let’s find talent in underserved and under-represented corners of the world, set them up to do the best work of their lives, and in turn, change their life.” To achieve this hiring mission, we offer competitiveU.S. benchmarkedcompensation no matter where someone’s located in the world, and we proactively seek candidates who expand representation of backgrounds, cultures and lived experiences in our teams.

Circle is an equal opportunity employer and as such, we do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws.If you require any accommodations during the recruitment process, please let us know and we will work with you to meet your needs.

How We Use Candidate Data

At Circle, we are committed to protecting your personal information. As a job applicant, the personal data you provide to us is collected and processed in accordance with theGeneral Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the EU and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). This notice outlines the types of personal information we collect, the purpose for collecting it, and your rights.

Information We Collect: We collect the following categories of personal information from job applicants:

• Contact information (such as name, email address, phone number)
• Employment history and qualifications
• Education history
• References and any other information you choose to share with us during the application process

Purpose of Collection: We collect this information for the following purposes:

• To assess your qualifications and suitability for the position
• To communicate with you during the recruitment process
• To comply with legal and regulatory obligations

Your Rights Under GDPR and CCPA: You have the following rights regarding your personal information:

• The right to request access to the personal information we hold about you.
• The right to request the deletion of your personal information, subject to certain legal exceptions.
• The right to opt out of the sale of your personal information (Note: We do not sell personal information).

For more information about how we handle your personal data or to exercise your rights, please refer to our full Privacy Policy .

By submitting your application, you acknowledge that you have read and understood this privacy notice.

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