Senior AI Engineer (Conversational AI)

Remofirst, Inc.; South Africa; Remote; ZAR 1,000,000 - 1,800,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

100% remote work

Startup environment

Competitive compensation

Growth opportunities

Direct impact

Job summary

RemoFirst is seeking an experienced AI Engineer to design, develop and maintain production-grade conversational AI systems. You will own AI features from design through deployment, building scalable architectures and agent workflows across voice and chat applications.

You will collaborate with product, frontend, and backend teams to deliver end-to-end AI features, optimize quality, and participate in data-driven experimentation and monitoring in a remote-ready environment.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience building AI-powered applications in production.
• Strong knowledge of large language models (LLMs) and prompt engineering.
• Proven experience designing conversational AI systems (voice and/or chat).
• Strong understanding of AI system design including context management and multi-agent workflows.
• Experience building AI evaluation frameworks, automated testing pipelines, benchmarking, and regression testing.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and maintain production-grade conversational AI systems.
• Own AI features from design through deployment and production support.
• Design scalable AI architectures and agent workflows.
• Build and maintain AI evaluation frameworks, benchmarks, and automated testing pipelines.
• Collaborate with product, frontend, and backend teams to deliver end-to-end AI features.

Skills

LLMs

Prompt engineering

AI agents

RAG

Tool calling

Structured outputs

Orchestration frameworks

Conversational AI

Context management

Memory and retrieval

Multi-agent workflows

Reasoning pipelines

AI evaluation frameworks

Regression testing

Software engineering fundamentals

Design patterns

CI/CD

Cloud platforms

APIs

Tools

OpenAI API

Anthropic

Gemini

RAG tooling

Testing frameworks

Job description

RemoFirst is transforming the way businesses hire and manage global teams. Our mission is to enable Freedom of Work by providing an all-in-one global HR platform that simplifies hiring, compliance, payroll, and benefits management. We partner with some of the world's most innovative companies, including Fortune 500 businesses and leading startups. We are a small but strong team of 250+ people (and growing) hyper-focused on delivering a world-class platform and unparalleled service with our industry-leading partnerships.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and maintain production-grade conversational AI systems
• Own AI features from technical design through deployment and production support
• Design scalable AI architectures and agent workflows
• Build and maintain AI evaluation frameworks, benchmarks, and automated testing pipelines
• Continuously improve AI quality through experimentation, evaluation, and data-driven optimization
• Integrate multiple AI providers and select the best models for different use cases
• Monitor production AI systems and proactively improve reliability, quality, and performance
• Collaborate with product, frontend, and backend teams to deliver end-to-end AI features
• Review technical designs and contribute to engineering best practices
• Troubleshoot complex AI and production issues while ensuring high-quality, maintainable solutions
• Stay up to date with the latest advancements in Generative AI and apply them where they create business value

Requirements

• 5+ years of experience building AI-powered applications in production
• Strong knowledge of Large Language Models (LLMs), prompt engineering, AI agents, RAG, tool calling, structured outputs, and orchestration frameworks
• Proven experience designing and developing conversational AI systems (voice and/or chat applications)
• Strong understanding of AI system design, including context management, memory, retrieval, multi-agent workflows, and reasoning pipelines
• Experience building AI evaluation frameworks, automated testing pipelines, benchmarking, and regression testing
• Demonstrated experience improving AI quality through iterative evaluation and experimentation
• Strong software engineering fundamentals, including clean architecture, design patterns, testing, and maintainable code
• Experience integrating multiple AI providers such as OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, or similar
• Experience deploying, monitoring, and maintaining AI applications in production environments
• Full-stack development experience with modern backend and frontend technologies
• Experience with cloud platforms, APIs, CI/CD pipelines, and production deployments
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills
• Ability to evaluate multiple AI approaches and select the most effective solution based on quality, reliability, latency, and cost
• Ability to independently own complex AI projects from design through production with minimal supervision

Nice to Have

• Experience building traditional ML applications
• Experience with AI observability, tracing, and monitoring
• Experience mentoring engineers and driving engineering best practices

Benefits

• Startup environment: RemoFirst is an early-stage startup. You have a voice that can influence, and grow rapidly. An opportunity to build a tech unicorn.
• Growth opportunity: This is a chance to join an AI-forward company driving innovation through artificial intelligence. As Product Designer, you'll lead product initiatives that deliver strategic impact
• Direct impact: Your work will be at the center of how we grow revenue, support customers, and differentiate in the market
• Autonomy and Accountability: We value autonomy and accountability — there's no bureaucracy or lengthy approval process. We prioritize speed and results to keep moving forward effectively
• Work for a Market Leader: Scale a project that counts market-leading companies like Microsoft, Mastercard, and more as happy customers.
• Leadership visibility: Reporting into the Lead AI Engineer which means your projects will be strategic and business-critical
• Compensation and perks are great: Competitive compensation. 100% remote work.
• Culture: You will get to work with some of the best colleagues coming from top tech companies. We lead with respect, kindness, and the right to fail. We value hard yet smart work. Diversity and inclusion are part of our DNA. As we grow and evolve, we welcome your input to help us define our culture further