Senior AI Engineer, Product Engineering

Alumni Ventures; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 200,000 - 250,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible PTO

Health insurance covering 100% of policyholder

401k program with 3% match

Paid parental leave

Work-from-home and technology stipends

Health & Wellness Allowance

Job summary

You.com is seeking a product engineer to own API product direction, working at the intersection of product, engineering, and customer engagement. You will define the roadmap for search APIs and engage deeply with strategic accounts to transform customer insights into concrete product specifications.

The ideal candidate has 5+ years in engineering and product roles, familiarity with the AI ecosystem, and strong abilities in communication and problem-solving. Competitive compensation and equity are offered, along with generous company perks.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience in engineering and product roles with API products.
• Ability to prototype new API primitives and ship production code.
• Strong technical and commercial credibility.

Responsibilities

• Define roadmap for core search APIs and adjacent surfaces.
• Partner with customer's founders and engineering leaders.
• Translate customer conversations into product specifications.
• Run technical deep dives and create documentation.
• Architect and unblock customer integrations.
• Stay hands-on by prototyping and shipping code.

Skills

Experience in engineering and product roles

Familiarity with AI and LLM ecosystem

Customer instincts

Excellent communication skills

Experience with developer API products

Job description

At You.com, we are building the AI Search Infrastructure that powers modern AI systems. Our goal is to create the trusted knowledge layer that agents, applications, and enterprises rely on to retrieve real‑time, accurate, and citation‑backed information.

Our platform combines proprietary vertical indexes with LLM‑optimized retrieval systems to power AI agents, applications, and enterprise workflows. We are solving hard problems across search, large language models, and large‑scale infrastructure to make AI systems more reliable, transparent, and useful.

Our team includes engineers, researchers, product builders, and operators who care about solving meaningful problems and delivering real‑world impact. Whether you are improving core infrastructure, shaping product experiences, or helping bring new AI capabilities to market, your work will help define how modern AI finds and uses knowledge.

The role

This is a hybrid product engineering and GTM role for someone who wants outsized impact at the intersection of all three. You'll own the direction of our API surface — shaping products like real‑time monitoring, vertical feeds, and the next generation of agent‑native retrieval primitives — while simultaneously sitting across the table from our most important customers to win, deploy, and expand high‑value accounts.

You’ll be the technical voice customers trust, and the customer voice the engineering team trusts. The insights you bring back from the field will directly shape what we build next.

This role demands high agency, deep customer obsession, and the rare ability to move fluidly between writing a technical product spec, debugging an integration on a customer call, and pitching a CTO on why our API should be core to their stack.

What you’ll do

• Own API product direction. Define the roadmap for our core search APIs and adjacent surfaces — monitoring, vertical feeds, evaluation tooling, and new primitives we haven’t built yet. Decide what ships, when, and why.
• Lead solutions for strategic accounts. Partner directly with the founders and engineering leaders of our top customers and prospects. Architect their integration, unblock their teams, and turn pilots into long‑term partnerships.
• Close the loop. Translate what you hear in customer conversations into concrete product bets. Write the specs, prioritize the roadmap, and make sure the highest‑leverage learnings actually become shipped features.
• Be the technical face of the product. Run technical deep‑dives, write the docs and reference implementations that matter most, and show up in the spaces where AI builders are deciding what to use.
• Set the technical bar. Work closely with engineering on API design, performance, and developer experience. Push back when something isn’t good enough; ship when it is.
• Stay in the code. This is a hands‑on role. You’ll prototype new API primitives and ship production code into the core stack when the highest‑leverage thing to do is just build it yourself.

What you’ll bring

• 5+ years of experience spanning engineering and product roles, with significant time spent on developer‑facing or API products. You can still write production code and want to — this role expects it.
• Deep familiarity with the AI agent and LLM ecosystem — you understand how agents are being built, where retrieval fits in, and where the current tooling falls short.
• A track record of owning ambiguous, high‑stakes problems end‑to‑end. You don’t wait to be told what to do; you find the highest‑leverage thing and go.
• Strong customer instincts. You enjoy customer calls, you’re sharp at reading what’s said and unsaid, and you can hold technical credibility with senior engineers and commercial credibility with executives.
• Excellent written and verbal communication. You can write a spec, a sales follow‑up, and a post‑mortem with equal clarity.
• Comfort with the messy reality of an early‑stage startup — shifting priorities, incomplete information, and the need to make calls without consensus.
• You’ve shipped a developer API or platform product that real engineers depend on.
• You’ve worked closely with sales or solutions teams in a previous role, or led that motion yourself.
• You’ve built or contributed to AI agents, retrieval systems, or search infrastructure.
• You have a public footprint — open‑source, writing, talks — in the AI or developer‑tools space.

Why this role

• Leverage. The decisions you make will compound across every customer we serve and every agent built on our APIs.
• Surface area. You’ll touch product, engineering, GTM, and strategy. If you want a path toward a senior product or technical leadership role, this is rocket fuel.
• Learning & Collaboration. You’ll work with world‑class talent on search, infrastructure and AI problems. This team has a history on defining every part of the stack, you’ll never get bored!
• Timing. Agent infrastructure is one of the defining categories of this decade, and the next 18 months will determine who wins it.
• Compensation. Competitive base, meaningful equity, and the upside of a startup team building something foundational.

Our salary bands are structured based on a combination of geographic tiers and internal leveling. Compensation is determined by multiple factors assessed during the interview process, with the final offer reflecting these considerations.

Salary Band

$200,000 - $250,000 USD

Company Perks

• Hubs in San Francisco and New York City offering regular in‑person gatherings and co‑working sessions
• Flexible PTO with U.S. holidays observed and a week shutdown in December to rest and recharge
• A competitive health insurance plan covers 100% of the policyholder and 75% for dependents
• 12 weeks of paid parental leave in the US
• 401k program, 3% match – vested immediately
• $500 work‑from‑home stipend to be used up to a year of your start date
• $600 technology stipend to support a portion of our hybrid/remote team's cell phone and internet expenses
• $1,200 per year Health & Wellness Allowance to support your personal goals
• The chance to collaborate with a team at the forefront of AI research

*Certain perks and benefits are limited to full‑time employees only

We are also an inclusive, equitable, and accessible workplace. Please let us know if you require accommodation for any portion of the recruitment and hiring process.

You.com participates in E‑Verify. We will provide the Social Security Administration (SSA) and, if necessary, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) with information from each new employee’s Form I‑9 to confirm work authorization.

No scams: You.com will only contact you through official @You.com email addresses and will never ask for payment or sensitive personal information during the hiring process.

As set forth in You.com’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.