Staff Frontier Agents Engineer (Applied Artificial Intelligence)

Scale AI; New York (NY); On-site; USD 180,000 - 280,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health coverage

Learning stipend

Office visits and community events

Parental support

Job summary

Scale AI is seeking a Staff Frontier Agent Engineer (Applied AI) to bridge cutting-edge AI research with enterprise deployment. You will design and deploy intelligent systems that combine frontier models with structured knowledge, retrieval, and enterprise software.

You’ll work across a diverse portfolio of AI challenges, building multi-agent systems and customer intelligence platforms for enterprise clients. Strong experience with LLMs and production AI systems is essential.

Qualifications

• Excellent communication skills and the ability to work directly with enterprise customers.
• Strong understanding of machine learning fundamentals and modern language models.
• 8+ years of software engineering, machine learning, or applied AI experience.
• Strong Python programming skills.
• Experience building production AI systems using LLMs.
• Experience with modern AI tooling, including OpenAI, Claude, MCP, agent frameworks, vector databases, or retrieval systems.
• Experience designing or evaluating AI systems using quantitative metrics.
• Deep understanding of reasoning, retrieval, memory, planning, and tool use.
• Experience designing evaluation frameworks for LLMs and agentic systems.
• Experience with RAG, semantic search, knowledge graphs, customer intelligence systems, or structured knowledge representations.
• Experience with fine‑tuning, distillation, reinforcement learning, small language models, or model optimization.
• Familiarity with multimodal AI systems and frontier foundation models.
• Experience building distributed production systems.
• Experience with cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure, or GCP.

Responsibilities

• Bridge cutting-edge AI research and production deployment for enterprise customers.
• Design, evaluate, and deploy intelligent systems combining frontier models with enterprise data.
• Develop multi-agent systems coordinating reasoning, tool use, and human oversight.
• Lead end-to-end experimentation from hypothesis to production rollout.
• Collaborate with customers to translate problems into scalable architectures.

Skills

Python programming

Machine learning fundamentals

LLMs

Production AI systems

Enterprise customer interaction

Cloud platforms

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

CI/CD

Production observability

Job description

• Applied AI is moving faster than ever
• New foundation models, reasoning techniques, agent architectures, and research papers emerge every week
• Yet building AI systems that reliably solve real-world problems remains one of the hardest engineering challenges
• As a Staff Frontier Agent Engineer (Applied AI), you’ll bridge the gap between cutting‑edge AI research and production deployment
• You’ll work directly with enterprise customers to design, evaluate, and deploy intelligent systems that combine frontier models with structured knowledge, retrieval, traditional machine learning, and enterprise software
• Unlike traditional ML roles that focus on a single model or product, you’ll work across a diverse portfolio of AI challenges spanning multiple industries and use cases
• You may build a multi‑agent research system and then participate in designing a customer intelligence platform, a healthcare copilot, or an autonomous workflow for a Fortune 100 company
• If you enjoy reading new AI papers, experimenting with the latest models, and shipping production systems that create measurable business impact, you’ll fit right in
• Design and deploy production AI agents that leverage the latest advances in large language models, reasoning, retrieval, memory, and tool use
• Architect intelligent systems that combine LLMs, traditional machine learning, structured knowledge, enterprise data, and deterministic software into reliable production workflows
• Engineer customer intelligence layers, retrieval pipelines, memory systems, and knowledge representations that allow agents to reason over large, heterogeneous enterprise data
• Develop multi‑agent systems that coordinate reasoning, planning, tool execution, and human oversight
• Translate frontier AI research into production systems by rapidly evaluating new models, prompting techniques, reasoning paradigms, and agent architectures
• Own the full experimentation lifecycle, from hypothesis generation to production rollout
• Design rigorous evaluation frameworks using offline benchmarks, online A/B experiments, golden datasets, regression suites, LLM-as-a-Judge, and human evaluation
• Run controlled experiments and ablation studies to understand the contribution of different models, prompts, retrieval strategies, reasoning techniques, memory systems, and agent architectures
• Continuously evaluate newly released frontier models and determine where they meaningfully improve quality, latency, reliability, or cost
• Develop confidence estimation, reflection, and continuous learning systems that improve agents over time using real‑world feedback
• Measure success through business outcomes, not benchmark scores
• Build production‑quality AI systems with a strong emphasis on reliability, observability, latency, safety, and cost
• Design agent guardrails, fallback strategies, tracing, monitoring, and evaluation pipelines that enable safe deployment in high‑stakes environments
• Collaborate with infrastructure engineers to deploy AI systems securely within enterprise cloud environments
• Build human‑in‑the‑loop workflows that effectively combine AI automation with expert oversight
• Partner directly with enterprise customers to understand their business, data, and operational challenges
• Translate ambiguous customer problems into production AI architectures
• Rapidly prototype new ideas, validate them with customers, and evolve successful solutions into scalable production systems
• Identify reusable patterns that become core capabilities across many enterprise deployments
• You’ll work across the full lifecycle of modern AI systems:
• Designing reasoning and agent architectures
• Building retrieval, memory, and customer intelligence systems
• Developing predictive models that work alongside LLMs
• Running experiments and ablation studies
• Shipping production systems into enterprise environments
• Measuring business impact through online experimentation
• Continuously improving agents using real‑world feedback

Benefits

• Health & Wellbeing: Our holistic approach to supporting Scaliens includes comprehensive health coverage, dental and vision insurance, mental healthcare services, and more. PTO policies and accommodating schedules ensure you’ll get time off when you need it to relax and recharge. Note that our offerings may vary by region as we strive to respond to the unique needs of Scaliens around the globe.
• Personal & Career Growth: Continuously learn and grow through annual learning & development stipend, attending leadership breakfasts, manager training, speaker series, and joining an ERG.
• Building Scale Community: We welcome guests to our offices, and you can expect to see Scalien families and friends around. Join local happy hours, and accept invites to game nights, book clubs, and many other employee‑led community events.
• Parental Support: Balancing work and family is essential, and Scale understands the importance of having adequate leave policies in place to promote a healthy home and work life.

Excellent communication skills and the ability to work directly with enterprise customersStrong understanding of machine learning fundamentals and modern language models8+ years of software engineering, machine learning, or applied AI experienceStrong Python programming skillsExperience building production AI systems using LLMsExperience with modern AI tooling, including OpenAI, Claude, MCP, agent frameworks, vector databases, or retrieval systemsExperience designing or evaluating AI systems using quantitative metricsExperience building production AI agents or autonomous systemsDeep understanding of reasoning, retrieval, memory, planning, and tool useExperience designing evaluation frameworks for LLMs and agentic systemsExperience with RAG, semantic search, knowledge graphs, customer intelligence systems, or structured knowledge representationsExperience with fine‑tuning, distillation, reinforcement learning, small language models, or model optimizationFamiliarity with multimodal AI systems and frontier foundation modelsExperience building distributed production systemsExperience with cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure, or GCPExperience with Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD, and production observabilityExperience integrating AI systems into enterprise software environmentsExperience working directly with enterprise customersAbility to translate ambiguous business problems into technical architecturesStrong written and verbal communication skillsExperience leading technical workshops, architecture reviews, or customer design sessions