AI Engineer

Description

Position at Imagine Learning

Great Purpose. Great People. Great Opportunities.

At Imagine Learning, we Empower Potential - in students, educators, and each other. As the leading provider of digital-first K–12 curriculum solutions, we’re committed to igniting learning breakthroughs that spark curiosity, creativity, and confidence. Every day, our team designs innovative tools that help educators personalize instruction and engage students in meaningful ways. We’re shaping the future of learning through our Curriculum-Informed AI™ approach - technology that understands instructional context, respects educator judgment, and transforms how teachers personalize learning at scale to unlock each student’s potential. Together, we’re reimagining what’s possible and transforming education.

That same spirit of innovation and purpose drives our team culture. At Imagine Learning, you’ll find opportunities for meaningful work, continuous growth, and connection with passionate colleagues who care deeply about making a difference. We celebrate collaboration, embrace change, and believe in lifelong learning - for our students and ourselves.

Imagine Learning offers flexible work arrangements across the U.S. and internationally. U.S.-based employees located in or around Tempe, AZ (HQ), Austin, TX, Petaluma, CA, Rock Rapids, IA, or Stamford, CT, typically work on a hybrid schedule at one of our office locations.

Imagine Your Impact. Come help us explore what’s possible with AI-powered research and development in education. We’re building a small, entrepreneurial team with room to experiment, big problems to solve, and a shared drive to make a difference. You’ll dig into emerging technology, turn ideas into working prototypes, and learn alongside colleagues who are as curious and committed as you are. We’re looking for people who take initiative, bring energy to hard problems, and care about seeing the work through. If you’re excited to go deep on AI, share what you discover, and move quickly with a team that builds and learns together, you’ll have a hand in shaping this work from the start. Bring your curiosity, your ideas, and your determination to make things better for students and educators.

The AI Engineer explores new AI capabilities for education at Imagine Learning. On a small, co-located R&D team, this hands-on role turns experiments into prototypes and reliable software. We seek an inventive engineer who wants to push beyond established solutions, improve learning, and collaborate closely with product and research colleagues. Success requires comfort with ambiguity, disciplined evaluation, and rapid learning.

For more information on what it’s like to work at Imagine Learning, including our culture, benefits, and products, visit us HERE.

To learn more about a typical applicant journey at Imagine Learning, click HERE.

Position Information: This is a regular, full-time position, reporting to the Software Engineering Manager UK.

Compensation: Base pay is anticipated to be between $129,339.00 and $200,000.00 per year. Eligible employees may also receive incentive/commission/annual bonus pay based on individual and/or company performance. Compensation may vary based on factors such as, but not limited to, individual skills, experience, training, education/certifications, geographic location, internal equity, and local market conditions.

Location: This US-based position is hybrid, and a coworking space will be provided in the Boston, MA area.

Travel: This role may require limited travel of approximately 10% or less, with occasional travel to Connecticut and, less frequently, Tempe, Arizona. Be sure you have a valid driver’s license, automobile insurance, and a clean driving record for at least the preceding 39 months.

Benefits: Imagine Learning provides a comprehensive benefits program to eligible employees, including:

• Multiple health, dental, and vision plans, including medical plans with zero employee premiums
• 401k plan with a company match
• 16 paid holidays, which include 2 floating holidays and a winter shutdown from Christmas Eve through New Year’s Day
• Paid Time Off
• Comprehensive maternity and fertility/family building benefits
• Paid bonding leave when a new child joins your family
• Access to on-demand mental health resources
• Life and short and long-term disability insurance
• Pre-tax savings plans
• Paid volunteer time off
• A wide variety of professional development programs, including tuition reimbursement
• Work from home opportunities that foster work/life balance

Envision Your Experience.

In this role you’ll have the opportunity to:

• Prototype AI applications and agentic workflows using model APIs, tool calling, retrieval, structured outputs, and state management.
• Compare models and architectures for each use case; apply fine-tuning or other model adaptation when evaluation demonstrates an advantage.
• Build evaluation datasets, automated checks, and human review workflows to measure quality, robustness, and regressions.
• Diagnose failures through traces and error analysis; improve grounding, tool reliability, context handling, and recovery from unexpected outputs.
• Design sandboxed execution with least-privilege access, network and filesystem restrictions, secrets protection, and resource limits for agent tools and generated code.
• Test prompt injection, data leakage, and unintended actions; implement output validation, isolation boundaries, and auditable execution with security partners.
• Measure latency, throughput, and inference costs; collaborate with application engineers and learning researchers on testable, observable software.
• Test emerging techniques, document findings and limitations, and help the team decide what to pursue, revise, or stop.
• Other duties as required.

Share Your Expertise.

Experience, education, and qualifications essential for success in this role, include:

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, engineering, or a related field and at least 5 or more years of software or machine learning engineering experience; or an acceptable combination of education and experience.
• Hands-on experience building LLM applications with tool use, retrieval, structured outputs, and evaluation; ability to explain failures and improvements.
• Strong Python or TypeScript skills; experience with APIs, asynchronous code, data models, testing, cloud services, and debugging across system boundaries.
• Practical understanding of sandboxing, isolation, access controls, secrets management, and security risks in agentic systems.
• Strongly preferred: experience with multimodal or voice AI, agent orchestration, model adaptation, or evaluation infrastructure; active experimentation with emerging AI methods.
• Preferred: experience and understanding of agentic toolkits or frameworks such as Deep Agents, LangChain, LangGraph, OpenClaw, Hermes, or comparable tools.

At Imagine Learning, we believe our work is strongest when people feel respected, supported, and encouraged to contribute their unique perspectives. We strive to create a welcoming workplace where employees can learn from one another, grow together, and build educational experiences that reflect the world of our learners.

Imagine Learning is an Equal Opportunity Employer committed to providing equal employment and advancement opportunities to qualified individuals. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, ancestry, national origin, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, lactation, or related medical conditions), gender identity or expression, transgender status (including whether or not you are transitioning or have transitioned), sexual orientation, marital status, religion (including religion dress and grooming practices), age 40 and over, physical or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information (including results of genetic testing and characteristics), veteran and/or military status, or service in the military, and any other basis or status protected under applicable federal, state, or local laws.

To all recruitment agencies: Imagine Learning does not accept agency resumes without our express written permission. Please do not submit candidates for consideration via our online application system, to Imagine Learning employees, or to any other organization location without written authorization to do so. Imagine Learning is not responsible for any fees related to unsolicited resumes.