Software Engineer, AI Agent & LLM

AI Chopping Block; Mountain View (CA); Hybrid; USD 155,000 - 185,000; Full time

Job summary

Otter.ai is seeking a Senior AI Agent & LLM Engineer to build and improve AI systems for our conversational knowledge engine and AI Chat. You will move from ambiguous problems to production solutions, define quality metrics, and drive improvements across models, data pipelines, and user experiences.

You will collaborate with AI, product, infrastructure, data, and security teams to deliver end-to-end capabilities, focusing on reliability, efficiency, and measurable product impact.

Qualifications

• 3+ years of AI Agent engineering, ML engineering, or related experience.
• Hands-on experience building and shipping AI-agent or LLM-powered products.
• Strong backend or distributed-systems engineering skills.
• Strong focus on AI quality and evaluating nondeterministic systems.
• Ability to use data, traces, logs, and qualitative examples to diagnose complex failures.
• Works effectively across services, technical domains, and organizational boundaries.
• Combines strong product judgment with rigorous engineering and evaluation practices.
• Operates with high agency, ownership, and a bias toward action.
• Can take ambiguous problems from initial exploration through production launch and continuous improvement.
• Demonstrated ability to use coding agents effectively while rigorously reviewing and controlling the quality of their output is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Build AI-agent experiences for Otter AI Chat to help users reason over conversations, retrieve knowledge, and complete complex tasks.
• Advance Otter’s conversational knowledge engine through better knowledge extraction, annotation, and indexing.
• Develop robust evaluation datasets, automated graders, regression tests, and release gates for AI quality.
• Diagnose failures across models, prompts, retrieval, tools, data pipelines, backend services, and product workflows.
• Build shared agent infrastructure for orchestration, tracing, debugging, retries, sandboxed execution, and observability.
• Improve task completion, correctness, groundedness, reliability, latency, and cost.
• Turn production traces, customer feedback, and usage signals into measurable product and model improvements.
• Collaborate across AI, product, infrastructure, data, security, and application teams to deliver end‑to‑end capabilities.

Skills

AI agent engineering

Backend engineering

Distributed systems

ML engineering

Production systems

Data analysis

Debugging

Collaboration

Ownership

Ambiguity handling

Job description

The Opportunity

We are looking for a Senior AI Agent & LLM Engineer who combines strong software engineering capabilities with a deep focus on AI quality.You will help build and improve the AI systems behind Otter’s conversational knowledge engine and AI Chat, spanning user-facing agent experiences, evaluation systems, and the shared platform required to operate them reliably at scale.

This is a hands‑on role for someone who can move from an ambiguous product problem to a working production solution, define how quality should be measured, and drive improvements across services, models, and user experience.

Your Impact

• Build AI-agent experiences for Otter AI Chat that help users reason over conversations, retrieve knowledge, and complete complex tasks.
• Advance Otter’s conversational knowledge engine through better knowledge extraction, annotation, and indexing.
• Develop robust evaluation datasets, automated graders, regression tests, and release gates for AI quality.
• Diagnose failures across models, prompts, retrieval, tools, data pipelines, backend services, and product workflows.
• Build shared agent infrastructure for orchestration, tracing, debugging, retries, sandboxed execution, and observability.
• Improve task completion, correctness, groundedness, reliability, latency, and cost.
• Turn production traces, customer feedback, and usage signals into measurable product and model improvements.
• Collaborate across AI, product, infrastructure, data, security, and application teams to deliver end‑to‑end capabilities.

We're looking for someone who

• Has 3+ years of AI Agent engineering, machine learning engineering, or related experience.
• Brings strong backend or distributed‑systems engineering skills.
• Has hands‑on experience building and shipping AI‑agent or LLM‑powered products.
• Has a strong focus on AI quality and experience evaluating nondeterministic systems.
• Can use data, traces, logs, and qualitative examples to identify and resolve complex failures.
• Works effectively across services, technical domains, and organizational boundaries.
• Combines strong product judgment with rigorous engineering and evaluation practices.
• Operates with high agency, strong ownership, and a bias toward action.
• Can take ambiguous problems from initial exploration through production launch and continuous improvement.
• Demonstrated ability to use coding agents effectively while rigorously reviewing and controlling the quality of their output is a plus.

About Otter.ai

We are in the business of shaping the future of work. Our mission is to make conversations more valuable.

With over 1B meetings transcribed, Otter.ai is the world’s leading tool for meeting transcription, summarization, and collaboration. Using artificial intelligence, Otter generates real‑time automated meeting notes, summaries, and other insights from in-person and virtual meetings - turning meetings into accessible, collaborative, and actionable data that can be shared across teams and organizations. The company is backed by early investors in Google, DeepMind, Zoom, and Tesla.

Otter.ai is an equal opportunity employer. We proudly celebrate diversity and are committed to building an inclusive and accessible workplace. We provide reasonable accommodations for qualified applicants throughout the hiring process.

Accessibility & Accommodations

Otter.ai is committed to providing reasonable accommodations for candidates with disabilities in our hiring process. If you need assistance or an accommodation during any stage of the recruitment process, please contact [e-mail] at least 3 business days before your interview.

Salary range

Salary Range: $155,000 to $185,000 USD per year

This salary range represents the low and high end of the estimated salary range for this position. The actual base salary offered for the role is dependent based on several factors. Our base salary is just one component of our comprehensive total rewards package.
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