Staff AI Engineer: Lead Scalable AI Systems

Robots & Pencils; California (MO); On-site; USD 125,558 - 173,239; Full time

Job summary

Robots & Pencils is seeking a Staff AI Engineer to lead AI/ML systems design and delivery, owning architecture end-to-end on a cross-functional team. You'll drive model development, deploy scalable pipelines, ensure reliability, security, and cost considerations, and raise the bar on engineering standards for AI products used by real users.

Ideal candidates bring 7+ years in software engineering with 4+ years in production AI/ML, strong Python design skills, and deep cloud expertise (AWS GenAI).

Qualifications

• 7+ years software engineering with 4+ years in production AI/ML.
• Python or similar language with scalable systems design.
• Deep cloud expertise and AWS GenAI understanding.
• Proven track record shipping complex AI systems.
• mastery of AI frameworks and orchestration tools.
• Experience with evaluation frameworks and observability for LLM apps.
• Understanding of AI safety, responsible AI, and PII handling.
• Experience building RAG pipelines and vector databases.
• API design and integration at scale.
• Cost optimization for AI workloads.

Responsibilities

• Lead end-to-end design and delivery of complex ML/AI systems.
• Build and evolve scalable ML platforms and pipelines.
• Set AI engineering standards and guide adoption of tools.
• Mentor junior engineers and drive cross-team collaboration.
• Own high-stakes work from research to production with reliability and cost control.

Skills

AI/ML system design

Python development

Cloud platforms (AWS)

Agentic systems

RAG pipelines

API design

Observability

Cost optimization

Code reviews

Mentoring

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

Claude Code

Cursor

AWS GenAI

Job description

Robots & Pencils is seeking a Staff AI Engineer to lead AI/ML systems design and delivery, owning architecture end-to-end on a cross-functional team. You'll drive model development, deploy scalable pipelines, ensure reliability, security, and cost considerations, and raise the bar on engineering standards for AI products used by real users.

Ideal candidates bring 7+ years in software engineering with 4+ years in production AI/ML, strong Python design skills, and deep cloud expertise (AWS GenAI).