Applied AI Engineer

About the company Our client is an enterprise software company. The role Raydar is recruiting for this role on behalf of our client. Design and build the AI layer of a software product, defining how the system reasons, coordinates multi-step tasks and interacts with users. The work covers agentic workflows, model integrations, evaluation and reliability, and close partnership with frontend and backend engineers. What you'll do

• Build multi-step agent workflows that track state, propose actions and carry tasks through to completion.
• Link language models to external functions, stored context and lookup layers that span mixed data sources.
• Safeguard sensitive information and design fallback behavior for failed tools, incomplete inputs and unreliable model outputs.
• Set up test harnesses that score how well generative features perform and feed results back into iteration.
• Tune AI interactions for speed, clarity and user control.
• Work with frontend and backend engineers to bring AI features into everyday product workflows.
• Weigh trade-offs between model capability, latency and reliability.

Requirements

What we're looking for

• Hands-on record of deploying language-model agents to live users, including function calling, stateful context and self-directed planning.
• Proven ability to raise the output quality of AI features through systematic scoring and testing.
• Experience leading multi-quarter technical projects from design through delivery.
• Expert-level Python backend development skills.
• Experience building retrieval systems over structured and unstructured data. Bonus points
• Prior work in a small, fast-paced engineering group at a young company.
• Background in manufacturing or industrial operations software.
• Master's degree in computer science, mathematics, physics or a related quantitative field.
• Familiarity with FastAPI.

Benefits

Compensation and benefits

• Salary: $160K - $250K
• Bonus
• Equity Location and work model
• San Diego, Los Angeles or San Francisco Bay Area, California, United States
• Hybrid: 3 days per week in office in San Diego, or one week per month in office for Los Angeles and Bay Area employees
• Full-time