Staff Software Engineer I – Artificial Intelligence

About the position

The Staff Software Engineer I – Artificial Intelligence is not only an exceptional builder but a domain expert in generative AI and ML technologies. This role is responsible to architect, implement, and scale advanced AI systems at Appcast. This role is expected to shape the technical direction of our AI products and act as a trusted advisor to your peers across engineering teams.

Responsibilities

• Architect and Build AI-Driven Solutions: Design, prototype, and deploy scalable AI and ML systems — particularly generative models — that power real-world recruitment applications.
• Advance the Technical Vision of Appcast Labs: Establish and evolve the technical foundation for Appcast’s AI strategy.
• Guide Engineering Best Practices in AI: Serve as the go-to authority on AI/ML engineering patterns, MLOps pipelines, model lifecycle management, and responsible AI practices.
• Drive Innovation with AWS AI/ML Tooling: Leverage and extend services like SageMaker, Bedrock, Lambda, and Step Functions to deliver reliable, performant, and secure AI workflows.
• Collaborate Cross-Functionally: Partner with data scientists, ML engineers, product managers, and business stakeholders to align AI initiatives with product and user needs.
• Mentor Through Influence: Mentor engineers through your example, peer support, and technical insights.
• Evaluate and Integrate Emerging AI Tech: Stay on the bleeding edge of LLMs, embeddings, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), vector databases, prompt engineering, and evaluation techniques.
• Own Quality, Testing, and Documentation: Ensure AI models are transparent, validated, and reproducible.

Requirements

• Demonstrated ability to lead technically through advising, mentoring, and elevating others across functions.
• Entrepreneurial mindset with a bias for action and a love for experimentation.
• Excellent communication skills — able to translate complex technical ideas to stakeholders at various levels.
• Proven experience building and deploying generative AI and ML systems in production environments.
• Deep expertise with AWS AI/ML services, such as SageMaker, Bedrock, Lambda, and related orchestration tools.
• Strong software engineering skills in Java with a focus on building scalable, maintainable systems.
• Familiarity with modern MLOps, model versioning, CI/CD for ML, and cloud-based data pipelines.
• Experience with open-source generative AI frameworks (e.g., Hugging Face Transformers, LangChain, LlamaIndex, etc.).

Nice-to-haves

• Master’s degree is a plus.
• Advanced coursework or certifications in machine learning, deep learning, natural language processing, or cloud-based AI systems (e.g., AWS AI/ML tools) are highly desirable.

Benefits

• Competitive compensation and comprehensive benefits.
• Dedicated employee networks and community fostering.
• Fun gatherings and delicious food.
• Welcoming furry friends into the workspace.