# Staff Applied AI Scientist

**Company:** [Gusto](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/gusto)
**Location:** Denver, CO, San Francisco, CA, New York, NY
**Role:** ML Engineering
**Salary:** $245k – $321k/yr
**Experience:** 12+ years
**Skills:** LLMs, NLP, RAG, Agent Orchestration, PyTorch, TensorFlow, Hugging Face, Python, GCP, AWS
**Posted:** 2026-05-12

> Designs, builds, and scales AI platform infrastructure including agent orchestration, RAG, eval tooling, and model serving for internal teams. Requires 12+ years AI/ML experience, expertise in LLMs/NLP, Python proficiency, and ML frameworks like PyTorch.

## Job Description

## Responsibilities

- Design and build scalable platform services — agent orchestration, RAG pipelines, eval frameworks, model serving — that internal teams use to ship AI-powered products.
- Lead technical strategy and architecture for the AI platform, including model lifecycle, observability, safety guardrails, and evaluation infrastructure.
- Collaborate cross-functionally with app teams, PMs, and Designers to understand their AI needs and deliver platform capabilities that unblock them.
- Build, harden, and operate shared infrastructure that powers intelligent agents across Gusto (e.g., retrieval, routing, prompt management, content selection).
- Stay current with AI/ML research; rapidly prototype and productionize new techniques that strengthen the platform.
- Establish robust practices for validation, deployment, monitoring, and ongoing performance management of platform services and the agents built on them.
- Communicate technical strategy, tradeoffs, and impact clearly to executives and non-technical partners.
- Mentor engineers across teams, raising the bar on AI/ML best practices and fostering a culture of pragmatic innovation.

## Requirements

- 12+ years building and deploying end-to-end AI/ML systems, with experience designing platform-level infrastructure that other engineering teams build on.
- Deep expertise in one or more areas: LLMs, NLP, retrieval/RAG, agent orchestration, deep learning, or reinforcement learning.
- Hands-on experience building LLM-based applications and agentic workflows — including prompt engineering, retrieval design, evaluation, and production deployment.
- Proficiency with modern ML frameworks (**PyTorch**, **TensorFlow**, **Hugging Face**) and cloud platforms (**GCP**, **AWS**, or **Azure**).
- Strong **Python** skills and sound software engineering fundamentals — testing, code review, CI/CD, reliability, and API design.
- Proven track record shipping impactful AI/ML projects to production, ideally in a platform or infrastructure context.
- Demonstrated ability to lead cross-functionally, influence technical direction, and communicate clearly with both engineers and non-technical stakeholders.

## Nice-to-Haves

- Ph.D. or Master's in CS, ML, Statistics, Mathematics, or related field.

## Compensation

- Targeted at $245,000-272,000 in Denver & most remote locations.
- $288,000-321,000 for San Francisco & New York.

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**Canonical:** https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/30b9cb81-5973-4f31-9d69-4d648e172d52