Sr. Staff AI Engineer (Remote)

Rula; Northern (KY); Hybrid; USD 170,000 - 250,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Remote-first

Comprehensive benefits

Health insurance

401(k) plan

Job summary

Rula is hiring a senior AI platform engineer to own the AI foundation powering mental healthcare workflows, engagement, and clinical operations at scale.

You will design core AI platforms, set safety and performance standards, and drive architecture decisions for production-grade generative AI in a regulated care environment. This is a hands-on role with ownership across product surfaces.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of software engineering experience.
• 7+ years in public cloud and distributed systems.
• 5+ years building AI-powered products at scale with foundation models.
• 2+ years in LLM integration or AI orchestration frameworks.
• 3+ years in MLOps, data pipelines, evaluation, and observability.

Responsibilities

• Own AI foundation powering mental healthcare products at scale.
• Design core AI platforms with safety, reliability, and performance standards.
• Lead system architecture and unblock complex engineering problems.
• Collaborate across product surfaces to enable scalable AI solutions.
• Shape responsible AI adoption in regulated care environments.

Skills

Software engineering

Public Cloud (AWS/GCP)

Distributed systems

Python

Backend languages (JS/TS/Java/Go)

LLM integration

AI orchestration frameworks

MLOps & data pipelines

Tools

LangChain

LlamaIndex

DSPy

Haystack

Pinecone

Weaviate

FAISS

Milvus

Job description

About the Role

At Rula, this role owns the AI foundation that determines how, and how well, AI shows up across mental healthcare. The focus isn’t on prototypes or isolated features, but on building durable, production-grade generative AI systems that directly power patient engagement, provider workflows, and clinical operations at scale.

You’ll operate where architecture, applied research, and real-world constraints meet. The work includes designing core AI platforms, setting technical standards for safety, reliability, and performance, and making principald decisions about how advanced AI is introduced into a regulated, high-stakes care environment. The goal is simple but hard: make AI genuinely useful in clinical contexts, without compromising trust or outcomes.

This is a deeply hands-on role with real technical ownership. You’ll define system architecture, unblock complex engineering problems, and act as a technical multiplier for other engineers working across product surfaces. Success here means creating foundations that others can build on confidently and that hold up under scale, scrutiny, and real patient impact.

The opportunity is less about chasing the frontier for its own sake and more about shaping how AI responsibly becomes part of everyday mental healthcare, setting direction not just for what we build next, but for how AI evolves inside the care ecosystem over time.

Required Qualifications

• 10+ years of software engineering, including 7+ years of experience with Public Cloud (AWS, GCP, etc.), 5+ years designing and scaling distributed systems.

• 5+ years of deep experience in Python and at least one backend language (preferably JavaScript, TypeScript, Java, or Go)

• 2+ years of proven track record building AI-powered products at scale, including hands-on experience with foundation models (OpenAI, Anthropic, Bedrock, Gemini, etc.).

• 2+ years of strong experience in LLM integration patterns (RAG, function calling, agents, memory routing, etc.), or AI orchestration frameworks (eg. LangChain, LlamaIndex, DSPy, Haystack), or vector databases (eg. Pinecone, Weaviate, FAISS, Milvus).

• 3+ years in working with MLOps, data pipelines, evaluation, and observability systems for continuous model improvement.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience architecting secure and compliant AI solutions in regulated environments (HIPAA, GDPR, etc.).

• Familiarity with human-in-the-loop systems and clinical decision support frameworks.

• Experience designing evaluation pipelines for human alignment, factual accuracy, or model interpretability.

• Contributions to open-source AI frameworks or applied research in NLP, healthcare AI, or GenAI safety.

• Experience contributing to early-stage team growth (0 → 1)

• Experience leading or mentoring engineering teams in AI, ML platform, or applied research domains.

We're serious about your well-being! As part of our team, full-time employees receive:

• 100% remote work environment: Working hours to support a healthy work-life balance, ensuring you can meet both professional and personal commitments (must be based in United States, currently not hiring in Hawaii)

• Attractive pay and benefits: Full transparency of pay ranges regardless of where you live in the United States

• Comprehensive health benefits: Medical, dental, vision, life, disability, and FSA/HSA

• 401(k) plan access: Start saving for your future

• Generous time-off policies: Including 2 company-wide shutdown weeks each year for self-care (for most employees)

• Paid parental leave: Available for all parents, including birthing, non-birthing, adopting, and fostering

• Employee Assistance Program (EAP): Supporting your mental and physical health

• Quarterly department stipend: Fun team-building activities or in-person gatherings

• Community and employee resource groups: Participate in groups that celebrate employee identity and lived experiences, fostering a sense of community and belonging for all

• Home office stipend: New hire home office stipend & $50 monthly stipend to help cover internet or cell phone expenses

• Wellness at Rula program: Year-round wellness initiatives and a $50/month wellness stipend

Our team

We believe that diversity, equity, and inclusion are fundamental to our mission of making mental healthcare work for everyone. We are dedicated to having a culture of inclusion that will support our employees in feeling safe, seen, heard, and valued.