Senior AI Engineer

Talkspace; United States; On-site; USD 169,000 - 200,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Comprehensive Medical, Dental and Vision plans

401k Retirement Savings Program with matching

Flexible PTO and Remote First Environment

Monthly Wellness Stipend

Job summary

Talkspace is looking for a Senior AI Engineer to design and scale autonomous AI agents within its behavioral health platform. This role demands deep expertise in ML systems, particularly in Reinforcement Learning (RL) and Large Language Models (LLMs). The ideal candidate has over five years in software engineering, ideally with hands-on MLOps experience and skills in cloud infrastructure. The position offers comprehensive benefits including healthcare plans, 401k matching, and a flexible remote-first work environment.

Qualifications

• 5+ years in a production software engineering environment.
• 3+ years in complex machine learning or autonomous systems.
• Experience in fine-tuning and deploying LLMs.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement technical architecture for AI agents.
• Apply RL for behavior strategies maximizing user outcomes.
• Develop models for human-agent interaction.

Skills

Python Programming

Reinforcement Learning

MLOps

Large Language Models (LLMs)

Cloud Infrastructure

Education

Bachelor's or Master’s degree in Computer Science, AI, Robotics, Electrical Engineering

Tools

AWS

GCP

Docker

Kubernetes

Job description

Senior AI Engineer

We are looking for an experienced Senior AI Engineer to join our team. The Senior AI Engineer will be a pivotal technical leader, responsible for designing, building, and scaling the autonomous AI agents that form the core of our behavioral health platform. This role requires deep expertise in developing complex, multi‑agent systems, leveraging Large Language Models (LLMs) for reasoning, planning, and goal setting, and applying Reinforcement Learning (RL) techniques to model and influence human behavior safely and ethically. You will drive the entire lifecycle of our agents—from developing cognitive architectures and interaction models to ensuring their robust, high‑availability deployment and continuous learning in a production environment. Given the sensitivity of behavioral health, this role demands an exceptional focus on safety, ethical autonomy, transparency, and data privacy. The ideal candidate is a seasoned engineer who can bridge the gap between theoretical AI (specifically RL and planning) and real‑world, scalable impact.

Talkspace HQ is in NYC; this position is based in Eastern Standard Time.

What You’ll Do

• Autonomous System Architecture: Design and implement the technical architecture for Sentia’s core AI agents, including the development of planning modules, memory/retrieval systems, goal‑setting algorithms, and tool‑use orchestration.
• Reinforcement Learning (RL) for Behavior: Apply advanced RL, Inverse RL, or related control theory methods to develop agents capable of adaptive, long‑term intervention strategies that maximize positive user outcomes while minimizing risk.
• LLM Integration and Fine‑tuning: Select, fine‑tune, and deploy foundation models (LLMs) to power agent reasoning, natural language understanding, and empathetic, context‑aware communication with users.
• Complex Interaction Modeling: Develop models for human‑agent interaction (HAI), incorporating principles from cognitive science and behavioral economics to ensure agents are effective, trustworthy, and aligned with therapeutic protocols.
• Simulated Environments: Construct robust simulation environments for pre‑training and testing agent policies, ensuring system stability and safety across a wide range of psychological and behavioral scenarios.
• Performance and Resilience: Optimize the deployment environment to manage the computational demands of multi‑agent orchestration, ensuring low‑latency decision‑making and high system resilience.
• Technical Strategy: Lead the evaluation and adoption of new agentic frameworks, reasoning technologies, and system design patterns that position Sentia as a leader in autonomous behavioral health technology.
• Agent Evaluation & Observability: Design and implement comprehensive evaluation pipelines for multi‑agent orchestration—including visualisations, trace‑level analysis of LLM calls and tool invocations, offline evaluation against golden datasets, real‑time production monitoring for behavioural drift and outcome correlation, guardrails, and human‑in‑the‑loop annotation workflows. Establish metrics frameworks to assess reasoning quality, task completion, safety compliance, and task alignment across the full agent lifecycle.

About You

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Electrical Engineering, or a highly quantitative field.
• Minimum of 5+ years of experience in a production software engineering environment, with at least 3+ years specifically focused on designing, implementing, and deploying complex machine learning or autonomous systems.
• Exceptional Python Programming Skills: Mastery of Python and its scientific libraries.
• Production MLOps Expertise: Demonstrated experience building and managing CI/CD pipelines for ML models and integrating them into service‑oriented architectures (SOA).
• Autonomous/Agentic Systems: Strong theoretical understanding and practical application of techniques central to agentic AI, such as Reinforcement Learning (RL), planning algorithms, or complex decision‑making systems.
• LLM Deployment: Hands‑on experience fine‑tuning, deploying, and managing Large Language Models (LLMs) in a production environment, including knowledge of prompt engineering, retrieval‑augmented generation (RAG), and cost optimisation.
• Software Engineering Rigor: Proven ability to write high‑quality, maintainable, scalable, and well‑tested production code.
• Proficiency with cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP) and containerisation technologies (Docker, Kubernetes).

Benefits

• Comprehensive Medical, Dental and Vision plans coverage since day one.
• Pre‑tax benefits: HSA/ FSA.
• 401k Retirement Savings Program with matching up to 4%.
• Voluntary benefits including disability, basic life or pet insurance, etc.
• Monthly Wellness Stipend to promote mental and physical self‑care.
• Flexible PTO and Remote First Environment.
• Regular team events, including Wellness Workshops and Team Building Events.
• Free access to Talkspace products for you and one household member, as well as access to a friends and family discount.

Compensation

The base salary range for this role is between $169,000 and $200,000. Within the salary bands, leveling corresponds to each candidate’s relevant experience, skills as assessed during the interview process, education, and applicable certifications.

EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER

Individuals seeking employment at Talkspace are considered without regard to race, color, religious creed, sex, national origin, citizenship status, age, physical or mental disability, sexual orientation, marital, parental, veteran or military status, unfavorable military discharge, or any other status protected by applicable federal, state or local law.