{"id":837279,"url":"https://alion.io/job/emcap-staff-software-engineer-applied-ai","title":"Staff Software Engineer, Applied AI","company":{"id":36495,"name":"Emcap","domain":"emcap.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/emcap","size_band":null,"is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":true,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Ashby","truth_index":{"grade":"B","score":75,"open_postings":6,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":1,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":null,"computed_at":"2026-10-17T05:46:00Z"}},"role":"Backend","role_family":"Backend","seniority":"staff","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["San Francisco, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":{"min_usd":194000,"max_usd":353000,"period":"year","method":"role_seniority_country_remote_cell","sample_n":1372},"experience_years_min":4,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Embeddings","optional":false},{"name":"Fine-tuning","optional":false},{"name":"JavaScript","optional":false},{"name":"LLM","optional":false},{"name":"Prompt Engineering","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"RAG","optional":false},{"name":"TypeScript","optional":false},{"name":"Chroma","optional":true},{"name":"LangChain","optional":true},{"name":"LlamaIndex","optional":true},{"name":"NLP","optional":true},{"name":"Pinecone","optional":true},{"name":"Weaviate","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2025-12-22T21:53:39Z","employer_posted_date":"2025-12-22","last_verified_at":"2026-10-18T07:33:09Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":299,"trust":{"level":"stale","repost_count":0,"flags":["stale"],"days_open":299},"description":"About the Role\nWe're building AI products that solve real problems for real customers. This role sits at the intersection of product and engineering- you'll own features end-to-end, from understanding user problems to shipping production code that scales.\nApplied AI product engineering is a new discipline. You won't just be integrating APIs - you'll be designing AI systems that work reliably in production, building evaluation frameworks to measure quality, and iterating rapidly based on real user feedback. You'll work directly with customers to understand their workflows and translate that understanding into product decisions.\nThis is not a research role. We're looking for engineers who ship. You'll be measured by the products you deliver and the problems you solve, not by papers published or models trained. The best candidates combine deep technical skills with strong product intuition and a relentless focus on user outcomes.\nWhat You'll Do\nDesign, build, and ship AI-powered product features from concept through production deployment\n\nDevelop and maintain LLM-based systems including RAG pipelines, agents, and workflow automation\n\nBuild evaluation frameworks and monitoring systems to ensure AI quality and reliability\n\nWork directly with customers to understand problems, gather feedback, and validate solutions\n\nCollaborate with product and design to define roadmap and prioritize features based on impact\n\nOptimize system performance, cost, and latency as usage scales\n\nContribute to technical architecture decisions and establish engineering best practices\n\nQualifications\n4+ years of software engineering experience, with at least 1-2 years building AI/ML-powered products\n\nStrong proficiency in Python; experience with TypeScript/JavaScript for full-stack development\n\nHands-on experience with LLMs in production: prompt engineering, RAG systems, fine-tuning, or agent frameworks\n\nSolid understanding of ML fundamentals: embeddings, vector databases, evaluation metrics, and model selection\n\nExperience building and maintaining production systems with high reliability requirements\n\nStrong product intuition, ability to translate ambiguous user needs into concrete technical solutions\n\nExcellent communication skills and comfort working directly with customers and stakeholders\n\nBS/MS in Computer Science, or equivalent practical experience\n\nNice to Have\nExperience with AI infrastructure: LangChain, LlamaIndex, vector databases (Pinecone, Weaviate, Chroma)\n\nBackground in NLP, information retrieval, or search systems\n\nPrevious startup experience, especially as an early engineer or technical co-founder\n\nDomain expertise in financial services, legal, healthcare, or other enterprise SaaS verticals\n\nContributions to open-source 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