Applied AI Engineer

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in Texas.

📋 Description

• Make an immediate impact on Homeward's AI development.

• Design, develop, and maintain AI-driven features within our products, including LLM API integrations, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines, and automation tools for customers, agents, and operations.

• Understand and articulate project requirements.

• Create and enhance shared tools and reusable components that facilitate team access to, integration with, and operation of LLMs in production.

• Contribute to the tools that ensure the reliability of AI features, including observability, monitoring, evaluation, and managing prompts and context, allowing us to measure and debug effectively.

• Tackle challenging and ambiguous problems that can be addressed using LLMs and machine learning to resolve real business issues, and mentor others in solving similar challenges.

• Rapidly prototype solutions, then collaborate with peers and senior engineers to refine them into deployable and maintainable products.

• Help establish the standards and practices for AI development at Homeward, ensuring that the best methods are easily accessible to the team.

• Assess new models, tools, and methodologies, recommend valuable options for adoption, and assist others in implementing them.

• Integrate AI coding assistants (such as Claude and Copilot) seamlessly into your daily workflow, while guiding the team to maximize their benefits.

• Develop automated unit and integration tests to support our continuous integration pipelines, and engage in code reviews.

• Collaborate closely with Product, Engineering, and Data teams to ensure that our developments are useful, well-documented, and easily adoptable.

⛳️ Requirements

• 4-6 years of professional back-end development experience, preferably in a dynamic environment.

• Practical experience in building or managing AI/ML systems in production, with a genuine interest in aspects such as reliability, performance, cost, and safety.

• Experience with LLM APIs in production, including prompt design and context management.

• Proficient in Python and familiar with back-end frameworks like Django, Flask, or FastAPI.

• Strong understanding of web development best practices, including REST APIs, asynchronous task management, and effective data management.

• Sound judgment regarding trade-offs between reliability, latency, cost, quality, and maintainability, with a readiness to make decisions.

• Exceptional ownership in delivering high-quality solutions.

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to clarify complex concepts for others.

• An experimental mindset focused on building, testing, learning, and achieving business objectives.

• Resourceful and adaptable, ready to tackle tasks ranging from updating email templates to developing complex web applications, and eager to learn throughout the process.

• A strong sense of curiosity and comfort in navigating the rapidly evolving AI landscape.

• Familiarity with version control and CI/CD tools.

🏝️ Benefits

• Comprehensive medical, dental, vision, and life insurance coverage, with company contributions towards premiums.

• Generous paid time off, including 20 days of vacation, 5 sick days, 12 company holidays, and 2 floating holidays.

• Competitive paid parental leave of up to 13 weeks.

• 401(k) plan with employer matching contributions.

• Remote-first work culture, with headquarters located in Austin, TX.

• A collaborative, low-ego team that values intellectual curiosity and promotes continuous improvement.