Applied-AI Engineer

Build production AI that ships to real customers, not research demos.

Key Talent Solutions partners with a portfolio of venture-backed AI companies building agentic and applied-LLM products that are already in production with paying customers. We are looking for AI/ML engineers who want full ownership of systems that ship, retrieval, agentic workflows, evals, tool-use, and who measure their work by what reaches the customer, not what gets demoed.

What you'd own

• Agentic systems end-to-end: retrieval pipelines, tool-use and orchestration, evaluation infrastructure, and model integration in a real production environment
• The backend services that power those agents at customer scale
• The full loop from problem to shipped feature, working directly with founders and customers

What we're looking for

• Typically 3 to 8+ years building software or ML, with meaningful time at an early-stage startup. Seats range from sharp early-career AI builders to senior engineers; level depends on the specific role
• Production AI shipped to real customers. This is the bar. Research-only or demo-only profiles are not a fit
• Real depth in retrieval and agentic systems, plus backend ownership
• Product instinct: you build for users, not benchmarks

Strong bonus signals

• Agentic-AI product background (the Sierra, Decagon, Harvey, Cognition lane)
• Applied-LLM or eval-infrastructure depth (the LangChain, Braintrust, Sierra lane)
• Several of these teams sponsor visas, so international candidates already authorized or open to sponsorship are welcome

Compensation: $170K to $300K+ base, plus meaningful equity. Exact range and equity depend on the specific client and stage.

Not a fit: vibe-coders, title-seekers, and pure-research profiles with no production track record.