Staff Applied AI Engineer at Invoca

United States

$180k - $273k

About Invoca Commitment to our customers, collaboration, and continuous improvement in a positive environment are more than words written on a wall at Invoca, it’s our way of life. We take pride in an inclusive and egoless culture that helps us drive innovation and build value for both our customers and our people. And of course, there’s the competitive pay, great perks, and getting to work on an industry-leading product. If this sounds unlike most tech jobs you’ve had, you’re right. Come join us. We’re building something special. About the Engineering Team You’ll join a team where everyone, including you, is striving to constantly improve their knowledge of software development tools, practices, and processes. We are an incredibly supportive team. We swarm when problems arise and give excellent feedback to help each other grow. Working on our close-knit, multi-functional teams is a chance to share and grow your knowledge of different domains from databases to front ends to telephony and everything in between. We are passionate about many things: continuous improvement, working at a brisk but sustainable pace, writing resilient code, maintaining production reliability, paying down technical debt, hiring fantastic teammates; and we love to share these passions with each other. Learn more about the Invoca development team on our blog and check out our open source projects. About the Role Are you passionate about harnessing the power of generative AI and foundation models to build truly intelligent products? At Invoca, we're a team of innovators committed to building exceptional teams and groundbreaking AI solutions. This is a unique opportunity to architect the next generation of AI-powered customer experiences, making a direct and measurable impact on our products and the success of our clients. Why You'll Thrive Here As a key member of our Data Platform team, you won't just build models; you'll architect the future of how businesses understand and interact with their customers. You will: Architect and Deploy Applied AI Systems: Design, build, and deploy scalable, production-grade applications using foundation models and other advanced AI techniques to directly influence product performance and efficiency. Engineer Advanced RAG and Agentic Systems: Go beyond basic implementation. Engineer robust Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) pipelines and multi-step agentic workflows that can reason, use tools, and solve complex problems. Contribute to Agentic AI System Evaluation: Establish and manage rigorous evaluation frameworks for complex AI agents. You will go beyond simple response quality to assess the entire agentic process, including the validity of reasoning steps, correctness of tool use, task completion rates, and overall robustness. Excel in Prompt Engineering and Optimization: Craft, test, and manage sophisticated prompt chains and templates to ensure optimal performance, reliability, and cost-effectiveness from our AI models. Build for Scale and Reliability: Develop resilient serving architectures that seamlessly integrate Large Language Models (LLMs) with enterprise systems, ensuring high availability and performance. Champion MLOps for Applied AI: Develop and maintain sophisticated MLOps and CI/CD pipelines tailored for the unique challenges of generative AI, including prompt versioning, RAG pipeline management, and continuous evaluation of agent behavior. Translate Business Needs into AI-Powered Solutions: Work as a strategic partner to product and engineering teams, deeply understanding customer challenges and translating them into innovative, viable, and impactful AI features. Our Commitment to You At Invoca, Applied AI Engineers are empowered by mentorship from leading experts across our data science, engineering, and architecture teams. Our dedicated data platform team leverages a powerful combination of proprietary, patented technologies and best-in-class vendor tools to create an exceptionally scalable AI application platform. Our goal is to seamlessly deliver transformative AI-powered experiences through our robust API platform, and your expertise will contribute significantly in accelerating this mission. What You Bring to the Table We're looking for a creative and driven Applied AI Engineer who is excited to tackle complex problems and build impactful solutions. You likely have: Proven Experience: 7+ years of professional experience in Applied AI Engineering, ML Engineering, or a closely related role with a strong focus on building and deploying AI-powered products and applications. Applied AI & Python Expertise: Advanced proficiency in Python and hands-on experience building applications with leading AI/ML frameworks (e.g., LangChain, LlamaIndex, CrewAI, PyTorch). You are an expert with data and ML libraries (e.g., Pandas, spaCy). Production Generative AI Champion: Demonstrated success deploying and maintaining applications powered by LLMs and other generative models in a production environment. Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) Expertise: Deep, hands-on experience designing, building, and optimizing RAG pipelines. This includes expertise in vector databases (e.g., Qdrant, Pinecone, Weaviate), embedding strategies, and chunking techniques. Agentic AI System Evaluation Expertise: Demonstrable experience with modern evaluation techniques for multi-step AI agents. You should be able to speak to the trade-offs of evaluating reasoning traces, tool usage, and final outcomes using frameworks like LangSmith, DeepEval, Ragas, TruLens, or custom-built solutions. Prompt Engineering & In-Context Learning: Demonstrable skill in designing, testing, and optimizing complex prompts and few-shot examples to maximize model performance for specific tasks. Fine-Tuning Proficiency: Experience in fine-tuning foundation models for specific downstream tasks, with a clear understanding of when to fine-tune versus when to use in-context learning or agentic approaches. Scalable Model Serving: Advanced proficiency with API-driven frameworks for accessing and serving self-hosted foundation models (e.g., AWS SageMaker/Bedrock, Databricks Model Serving, TGI, vLLM), focusing on building resilient, scalable, and optimized integrations. Performance and Cost Optimization: A proven ability to optimize AI systems for low latency and high throughput. You have experience with techniques like model quantization, caching strategies, and infrastructure choices to manage and reduce operational costs. MLOps for AI Systems: Intermediate proficiency with MLOps tooling (e.g., MLFlow, Arize), and best practices for CI/CD, monitoring, and maintenance of complex AI systems. Educational Foundation: Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Statistics, or a related field (or equivalent practical experience). An advanced degree (Master's or Ph.D.) is a strong plus. This role is remote and open to candidates located in the United States and Canada only. Please note that we are unable to provide visa sponsorship for this position. Salary, Benefits & Perks: At Invoca, all new hires in the U.S. receive benefits starting on day one of employment. Our benefits offerings include: Please note that benefits for teammates outside the U.S. may vary in accordance with their country’s laws and regulations. Flexible Time Off – We encourage a healthy work-life balance. Our flexible paid time off policy allows you to recharge and take time away as needed. Paid Holidays – Invoca provides 16 U.S. paid holidays, including a winter break, giving you ample opportunity to refresh and spend time with friends and family. Health Benefits – Our healthcare program includes medical, dental, and vision coverage, with multiple plan options so you can choose what works best for you and your family. Fertility assistance is also included. Retirement – Invoca offers a 401(k) plan through Fidelity with a company match of up to 4%. Stock Options – All employees are invited to share in Invoca’s success through stock options. Mental Health Program– Well-being support on a broad range of issues is available through our SpringHealth program. Paid Family Leave – Up to 6 weeks of 100% paid leave is provided for baby bonding, adoption, and caring for family members. Paid Medical Leave – Up to 12 weeks of 100% paid leave is provided for childbirth and medical needs. InVacation – As a thank-you to our long-term team members, we offer a bonus after 7 years of service. Wellness Subsidy – We provide a subsidy that can be applied toward gym memberships, fitness classes, and more. Position Base Range - Salary Range $180,000 - $273,000 plus bonus + equity #LI-Remote