# Staff AI Engineer

**Company:** [Drata](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/drata)
**Location:** Remote
**Role:** ML Engineering
**Salary:** $201k – $272k/yr
**Experience:** 10+ years
**Skills:** LLMs, RAG, Embeddings, Reranking, Vector Databases, Pinecone, Faiss, Chroma, Agentic Workflows, Python, TypeScript, Evaluation Frameworks, Orchestration, Temporal, Airflow
**Posted:** 2026-03-02

> Staff AI Engineer designs and owns end-to-end production AI systems including LLM pipelines, RAG, and agentic workflows for compliance platforms. Requires 10+ years software engineering with 3+ years in ML/AI, strong Python, and production AI experience.

## Job Description

## Responsibilities

### Shape the Architecture
- Design and own production AI systems end-to-end (LLM pipelines, RAG, reranking, vector stores, orchestration).
- Make thoughtful build/don't-build decisions based on real data.
- Evolve our AI stack over time, from model infrastructure to workflow orchestration to evaluation tooling.

### Raise the Quality Bar
- Design evaluation systems that measure retrieval quality, reasoning accuracy, end-to-end performance.
- Build tooling that helps the team iterate confidently and catch regressions early.
- Define how we measure success across the platform.

### Investigate Deeply & Decide with Evidence
- Analyze production outputs to identify failure patterns and root causes.
- Turn complex findings into clear technical recommendations.
- Know when to push forward and when to pause based on data.

### Lead Across Teams
- Be the go-to technical voice for AI architecture decisions.
- Influence standards for how LLM systems are built, tested, deployed, and monitored.
- Mentor senior engineers through design reviews and hands-on collaboration.
- Partner with product and compliance teams to translate domain complexity into clean technical solutions.

### Build Responsible, Production-Ready AI
- Ship systems optimized for latency, cost, reliability, and auditability.
- Embed safety guardrails, confidence thresholds, and human-in-the-loop workflows.
- Ensure outputs are traceable and explainable.

## Requirements
- 10+ years of software engineering experience, including 3+ years working directly on ML/AI systems.
- Real ownership of production LLM systems.
- Deep experience with RAG, embeddings, reranking, vector databases (Pinecone, FAISS, Chroma, etc.), and agentic workflows.
- Experience designing evaluation frameworks and using quantitative analysis to improve system performance.
- Strong Python skills (TypeScript is a plus).
- A track record of making architectural decisions that shape team direction.
- Experience operating AI systems in production - observability, reliability, cost tradeoffs.
- The ability to break down ambiguous, high-stakes problems into structured investigations.
- Clear communication skills and comfort working cross-functionally.

## Nice to Have
- Experience in compliance, security, or other regulated domains.
- Familiarity with enterprise data platforms or Snowflake-based analytics.
- Experience with orchestration systems like Temporal or Airflow.
- Experience building or using LLM evaluation platforms (e.g., Braintrust).
- Contributions to technical communities or published work.

## Compensation
- Competitive base salary, benefits, and stock (RSUs).
- Salary range: $200,700 - $271,500 (varies by tier: Tier 1 $220,800-$298,800; Tier 2 $198,700-$268,900; Tier 3 $176,600+).

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