Staff AI Developer

The role

You will lead the design and delivery of AI/ML systems. You will define AI architecture, lead model development, and establish engineering standards on a cross-functional team.

What you will do

• Lead the design and implementation of complex ML/AI systems end-to-end
• Build and evolve scalable ML platforms, pipelines, and infrastructure
• Set the standard for AI-forward engineering using tools like Claude and Cursor
• Partner with product, engineering, and leadership to shape AI strategy
• Translate complex AI tradeoffs into clear narratives for stakeholders
• Lead design reviews and technical discussions
• Define AI architecture and engineering standards
• Mentor and grow junior and mid-level engineers
• Take ownership of ambiguous and high-stakes work

Required qualifications

• 7+ years professional software development experience
• 4+ years focused on AI/ML systems in production
• Deep hands-on experience with generative AI development
• Expert software development background (Python or similar)
• Deep expertise with cloud platforms, including AWS services and AWS GenAI offerings
• Proven track record designing and shipping complex agentic systems in production environments
• Mastery of AI frameworks and orchestration tools
• Strong experience with evaluation frameworks and observability tools for LLM apps
• Deep understanding of AI safety, responsible AI principles, prompt injection defenses, and PII handling
• Extensive experience building RAG pipelines: chunking strategies, embedding models, vector databases, and advanced retrieval techniques
• API design experience
• Advanced cost optimization expertise: token economics, caching strategies, model routing, quantization

About the company

Robots & Pencils designs AI systems for a human world. They pair engineering with creativity to ship production-ready AI in 30 to 45 days.