{"id":41426,"url":"https://alion.io/job/sierrastudio-lead-ai-engineer","title":"Lead AI Engineer","company":{"id":8919,"name":"Sierra Studio","domain":"sierrastudio.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/sierrastudio","size_band":null,"is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Ashby","truth_index":{"grade":"B","score":81,"open_postings":4,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0.75,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":null,"computed_at":"2026-10-17T05:46:00Z"}},"role":"AI/ML","role_family":"AI/ML","seniority":"lead","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"remote","remote_scope":"stated_countries","remote_scope_basis":"board_field","remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":[],"countries":[],"hiring_countries":["BR"],"hiring_countries_total":1,"salary":{"min":60000,"max":100000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":100000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"AI Agents","optional":false},{"name":"FastAPI","optional":false},{"name":"LLM","optional":false},{"name":"MVP","optional":false},{"name":"Prompt Engineering","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"RAG","optional":false},{"name":"TypeScript","optional":false},{"name":"Claude Code","optional":true},{"name":"Cursor","optional":true},{"name":"Fine-tuning","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2025-01-07T11:11:16Z","employer_posted_date":"2025-01-07","last_verified_at":"2026-10-18T06:23:50Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":648,"trust":{"level":"stale","repost_count":0,"flags":["stale"],"days_open":648},"description":"Lead AI Engineer\nAbout Sierra Studio\nSierra Studio is an AI engineering studio and startup incubator - we turn our customers' ideas into reality! We're based in Los Angeles, but our teammates live all around the world. We create products across all areas of software - from web and mobile apps to cutting-edge work at the forefront of AI and large language models.\nAbout The Role\nAs a Lead AI Engineer, you'll lead engineering for one or more AI initiatives at Sierra. You'll architect the stack, prompt engineer LLMs to solve real world problems, and work with your teammates to ship great products you're proud of. You'll work closely with product managers, designers, and other engineers to take products from idea to production. As an early employee at a startup, you'll also be part of creating our culture!\nHere's a taste of what you could do at Sierra!\nClient projects: Work with a startup founder to build the MVP of their idea\n\nInternal projects: Build an internal AI tool to transform our own workflows\n\nHiring: Help us grow our team and interview future candidates\n\nLeadership: Mentor other engineers to level up our team\n\nWho We're Looking For\nWe're looking for a lead engineer who has experience building great products with LLMs. Work experience, personal projects, or open source - any way you've built things counts.\nIf you're excited about this role but don't check every box, we'd love to see your application anyway.\nLLMs & AI\nYou've shipped something real with LLMs - at work, in a project, or in study\n\nExperience with prompt engineering, RAG, and agentic patterns\n\nExperience building evals for LLM-powered products\n\nGrowth mindset: Ability to quickly learn new skills in the AI space\n\nLeadership\nExperience leading the technical direction of products - formally or informally (tech lead, mentoring, owning a project end-to-end)\n\nAbility to work effectively with product, design, and other partners\n\nAbility to contribute to multiple projects at the same time\n\nComfortable communicating in English, written and verbal (our clients are US-based)\n\nSoftware engineering\nBackend: Either Python (e.g. FastAPI) or TypeScript experience is nice to have!\n\nBonus skills - nice to have!\nExperience with finetuning LLMs\n\nCuriosity about new developments in AI\n\nUses AI tools (Cursor, Claude Code, etc) to supercharge your own coding workflow\n\nHow We Work\nFully remote, with flexible hours - we care about output, not hours online. We support work-life balance for teammates at every life stage.\nOur culture\nGrowth mindset: We look to magnify our strengths, take chances, and always learn from our mistakes.\n\nSupportive: We keep our egos out of the workplace and support each other when trying new things.\n\nProduct & customer centric: We care deeply about our customers and clients and always keep their needs top of mind. We build tech to solve real problems.\n\nOwnership: We take initiative, even when it is \"not our job.\" As a startup, we all wear lots of hats.\n\nWhy join us?\nAt Sierra Studio, we believe in nurturing talent and creating good vibes at work. We seek inclusion and embrace our differences. We're all about \"growth mindset\", and we look to magnify our strengths, take chances, and always learn from our mistakes. We don't fit our teammates into boxes, and instead we understand that each person has their own unique set of skills that they bring to the table. If you join us, we'll embrace who you are today, and give you the space and tools to keep growing.\nSalary Range: $60,000 - $100,000 annually.\nYour exact compensation will be determined based on a variety of factors that reflect your individual qualifications and how they align with the needs of the role.","description_format":"text","description_chars":3691,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[{"language":"English","level":"Upper-Intermediate (B2)","optional":false}]},"benefits":[],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"Brazil","iso":"BR","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Angel Networks & Startup Accelerators"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2025-01-07T11:11:16Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":6,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.21,"p_room":0.28,"age_days":647,"expected_fill_days":28,"reasons":["conf:1","velocity","win:tail","crowd:"],"computed_at":"2026-10-17T05:46:00Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":100000,"is_top_pay":false},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/sierrastudio-lead-ai-engineer","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/sierrastudio-lead-ai-engineer.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-18T07:33:24Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":11238,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-19T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":8919},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=8919"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fsierrastudio-lead-ai-engineer"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fsierrastudio-lead-ai-engineer"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fsierrastudio-lead-ai-engineer"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/sierrastudio-lead-ai-engineer\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fsierrastudio-lead-ai-engineer"}]}