# AI Engineer

**Company:** [Taste Labs](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/taste-labs)
**Location:** San Francisco, CA
**Role:** AI Research
**Salary:** $175k – $275k/yr
**Skills:** Python, AI Agents, Machine Learning, Reinforcement Learning, embedding models, information retrieval, vector search, web crawling, web scraping, inference serving, APIs, synthetic data, Security, vulnerability mapping, evaluation pipelines
**Posted:** 2026-02-20

> Build AI systems, agent harnesses, evaluation pipelines, retrieval infrastructure, crawling systems, and inference APIs that make subjective design quality measurable. The role requires experience building AI-forward products or systems, strong technical judgment, and comfort solving ambiguous startup problems.

## Job Description

## Responsibilities
- Build AI systems powering taste agent harnesses, memory, evaluations, and tooling.
- Design evaluation pipelines and synthetic data generation systems.
- Create embedding and retrieval infrastructure that scales to millions of requests.
- Build crawling and scraping systems for visual data across the web.
- Set up inference serving and APIs for client-facing products.
- Manage security sweeps and vulnerability mapping.
- Develop reliable, fast tooling and infrastructure for AI-forward products.
- Build post-training data and reinforcement-learning environments for frontier models.
- Develop context and verification tools that help agents produce creative, on-brand, high-quality work.

## Requirements
- Experience building AI-forward products, systems, agents, or models.
- Strong technical judgment and high standards for code quality.
- Creativity and curiosity about making subjective domains verifiable.
- Ability to move quickly and adapt in an ambiguous startup environment.
- Preference for simple, clear solutions over unnecessary complexity.

## Nice-to-haves
- Open-source contributions or personal projects demonstrating curiosity and initiative.
- Background at creative companies such as Figma, Notion, Canva, Adobe, or Runway.
- Experience with indexing or crawling at companies such as Firecrawl, Brave, Luma, or Pika.
- Background in data-focused companies such as Mercor or Surge.

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**Apply:** https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/47e6f898-b31f-4ed0-b211-a3f495878959
**Canonical:** https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/47e6f898-b31f-4ed0-b211-a3f495878959