Senior AI Engineer

Nasiko; Palo Alto (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Nasiko is seeking a Senior AI Engineer to build and operate the backend and AI infrastructure behind its agent platform. You’ll work on token economics, policy enforcement, multi-agent workflows, and model routing, with Rust and Python in production.

You will own deployment, observability, and reliability, collaborating across AI infra, backend engineering, and production operations to move prototypes to secure, scalable services.

Qualifications

• Strong production engineering across backend systems (APIs/services/workers).
• Hands-on Python and Rust experience building and shipping production systems.
• Experience building LLM-powered applications or AI agents that use tool-calling and/or retrieval-style components.
• Production experience operating services with logs/metrics/traces and alerting/observability in place.
• Practical infrastructure skills: Docker, Kubernetes, and CI/CD; plus comfort with databases and queues.

Responsibilities

• Build and operate the backend + AI infrastructure behind Nasiko’s platform.
• Develop token usage, cost attribution, forecasting, and optimization systems for agents.
• Implement policy enforcement, access controls, and secure model/tool integrations.
• Support multi-agent workflow orchestration with fault tolerance and observability.
• Deploy and run Rust-based services alongside Python components and maintain production readiness.

Skills

Backend systems

Python

Rust

LLM/Agent experience

Observability

Docker

Kubernetes

CI/CD

APIs/services

Tools

PostgreSQL

Redis

Job description

Navii is an AI recruiter, running this search on behalf of Nasiko.

HERE'S HOW IT WORKS

Rather than your resume sitting in a queue, you have a conversation with Navii about your experience and what you want next. What you say reaches Nasiko's hiring team in your own words. It is a required step, and there is nothing to schedule.

NEXT STEP

A conversation with Navii about this role:

https://app.heynavii.ai/careers/senior-ai-engineer-031dcf13

ABOUT NASIKO

Nasiko is building the infrastructure enterprises need to run AI agents securely, efficiently, and reliably in production—and we’re looking for a Senior AI Engineer to help build the backend and AI systems that make that real. If you like turning prototypes into dependable services (with observability, policy, and cost controls baked in), this is a rare seat where you’ll own the core plumbing.

The Work

You’ll build and operate the backend + AI infrastructure behind Nasiko’s platform, including:

• TokenOps / FinOps for agents: token usage, cost attribution, forecasting, and optimization systems that help teams understand and control spend.
• Runtime policy enforcement: governed access for agents to models, tools, data, and credentials—so “it works” becomes “it’s safe and compliant.”
• Multi-agent execution: workflow infrastructure for execution engines, retries/recovery, and human approvals when it matters.
• LLM routing + model access: provider-agnostic routing and integration patterns for hosted and customer-managed models/inference endpoints.
• AI + MCP gateways: MCP server/client/tooling and gateway integrations that connect agents to enterprise systems in a controlled way.
• Evaluation + production feedback loops: monitoring, tracing, and evaluation pipelines that improve quality over time—not just in demos.

You’ll also contribute to the platform’s Rust-based services while building AI-facing components in Python, and you’ll own the deployment and operation of what you ship.

What You’ll Need

• Strong production engineering across backend systems (APIs/services/workers), including async/event-driven patterns and clear service design.
• Hands‑on Python and Rust experience building and shipping production systems.
• Experience building LLM-powered applications or AI agents that use tool‑calling and/or retrieval‑style components.
• Production experience operating services with logs/metrics/traces and alerting/observability in place.
• Practical infrastructure skills: Docker, Kubernetes, and CI/CD; plus comfort with databases and queues (e.g., PostgreSQL/Redis and message queues).

Even Better If

• You’ve built LLM routers/model gateways, agent runtimes/orchestration, or inference/model-serving infrastructure.
• You’ve worked on AI security/governance/policy enforcement or AI FinOps/token analytics.

Who Thrives Here

• You enjoy building the “boring but critical” parts—retries, failure handling, structured outputs, and operational visibility—because you know that’s what makes agent systems trustworthy.
• You can move between product intent and system design without losing either: you’ll translate requirements into clean abstractions and then ship them.
• You’re comfortable owning services end‑to‑end, including deployment and production support, and you don’t wait for someone else to make it reliable.

The Team

Nasiko is a Rust‑first company building agent infrastructure for production use. You’ll work across AI infrastructure, backend engineering, and production operations to take agent workflows from prototype to secure, observable services. The team is small enough that your decisions and code will directly shape how the platform works.

Non-Traditional Backgrounds

If you’ve built and scaled systems in any environment—startup, enterprise, or open source—and you’ve shipped LLM/agent capabilities into real production constraints, we want to hear from you.