Principal AI Engineer

People In AI; United States; On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

People In AI builds production AI agents to automate complex enterprise workflows. The team connects fragmented data, creates business context, and enables AI agents to execute high-value workflows for enterprise customers.

You will work directly with customers and leadership, owning core problems from discovery to production while shaping scalable backend and data-driven infrastructure in a lean startup environment.

Qualifications

• Experience building and owning AI agents in production.
• Strong backend and software engineering fundamentals.
• Experience with production LLM systems and their failure modes.
• Ability to work across AI, backend, data, and product.
• Strong ownership and comfort operating in ambiguous environments.
• Startup experience strongly preferred.
• LLMs and agentic systems.

Responsibilities

• Build and deploy production AI agents.
• Own customer problems from initial discovery through production.
• Design systems around complex, fragmented enterprise data.
• Improve agent reliability, performance, and failure handling.
• Build reusable agent and platform infrastructure.
• Work directly with customers and technical leadership.

Skills

AI agents production

Backend fundamentals

Production LLM systems

Ambiguity handling

Cross-functional collaboration

Startup experience

Job description

High-growth applied AI company building production agents to automate complex enterprise workflows.

This early-stage team is building infrastructure that connects fragmented enterprise data, creates business context, and enables AI agents to execute high-value workflows. With significant commercial traction already established, they’re scaling a deliberately lean engineering team.

What You’ll Do

• Build and deploy production AI agents.
• Own customer problems from initial discovery through production.
• Design systems around complex, fragmented enterprise data.
• Improve agent reliability, performance, and failure handling.
• Build reusable agent and platform infrastructure.
• Work directly with customers and technical leadership.

What You’ll Bring

• Experience building and owning AI agents in production.
• Strong backend and software engineering fundamentals.
• Experience with production LLM systems and their failure modes.
• Ability to work across AI, backend, data, and product.
• Strong ownership and comfort operating in ambiguous environments.
• Startup experience strongly preferred.
• LLMs and agentic systems
• Backend and distributed systems
• Context and ontology systems

Why Join?

Join at a rare stage where commercial traction is already significant, but the engineering team remains small. You’ll have meaningful ownership across product, architecture, and customer deployments while solving difficult AI problems tied directly to real-world outcomes.

About People In AI

People In AI connects exceptional AI talent with ambitious companies building the future of artificial intelligence.