Product Engineer (AI Driven) at AE Studio

<p>AE Studio is a development, data science, and design studio that works closely with founders and executives to create custom software and machine learning solutions.</p> <p>We build products, platforms, and internal ventures that increase agency for all conscious beings. We combine world-class software engineering, AI expertise, and product design to ship ambitious projects that matter.</p> <p>We’re looking for a <strong>Full-Stack Developer</strong> who bridges modern web engineering with practical AI; someone who can design, build, and ship production-ready, AI-powered applications while maintaining the standards of a top-tier software developer.</p> <h2><strong>What You’ll Do</strong></h2> <ul> <li>Design and ship end-to-end applications from prototype to production across frontend, backend, and cloud.</li> <li>Build clean, scalable APIs and services and integrate AI models where they create real value.</li> <li>Create AI pipelines (data ingestion, preprocessing, embeddings, retrieval, orchestration) that are reliable and maintainable.</li> <li>Engineer prompting strategies and guardrails for real-world performance (latency, cost, accuracy), not just demo hype.</li> <li>Integrate AI features into full-stack apps with robust APIs, frontend UX, and CI/CD pipelines.</li> <li>Collaborate with designers, PMs, and engineers to deliver polished product experiences.</li> <li>Continuously evaluate new AI tools/models for performance, cost, and fit.</li> <li>Write production-grade, testable, maintainable code in TypeScript/JavaScript and Python (and other languages as needed).<br><br></li> </ul> <h2><strong>What We’re Looking For</strong></h2> <ul> <li>7+ years of professional software engineering experience.</li> <li>Proven track record shipping production applications (links to live products welcome).</li> <li>Hands-on experience with LLM APIs (e.g., OpenAI, Anthropic), embeddings, vector databases, and orchestration frameworks.</li> <li>Strong command of modern web stacks (e.g., React/Next.js, Node.js/Nest/Fastify, Python/FastAPI) and cloud infrastructure.</li> <li>Solid grasp of architecture, scalability, performance, and security.</li> <li>A bias toward shipping with best practices (testing, code reviews, monitoring/observability).</li> <li>Clear communication, self-management, and comfort in a collaborative remote environment.</li> <li>Comfortable picking up new languages and frameworks, leveraging modern AI dev tools to move faster.<br><br></li> </ul> <h2><strong>What Sets You Apart</strong></h2> <ul> <li>Experience fine-tuning models or training custom models on domain-specific data.</li> <li>Contributions to open-source AI or developer tooling.</li> <li>Mature approach to prompt engineering and evaluation (beyond trial-and-error).</li> <li>Background in data engineering or MLOps.</li> <li>Passion for AI alignment, agency-increasing technologies, and ethical AI development.<br><br></li> </ul> <p>If you can write prompts that work today and code that still works in two years, we want to talk to you.</p> <p>Salary range from $115k/year to $185k/year (if you're based in LA). Not in the range? That's fine, you can still apply and our team may fit you in a more senior position that we're not actively hiring for right now, since we are growing fast and may have other openings soon.</p> <p><strong>EQUITY</strong></p> <p>Working at AE means receiving equity in our client projects and in Skunkworks ventures. The equity is priced at $0 when granted for tax reasons, but AE invests millions into these projects. Equity comes from reduced margins on client work and internal funding. You get a real stake in the things you help build.</p> <p>The longer you stay, the more value you create and the more equity you receive. If you leave on good terms, you can retain 20% of your equity by staying engaged. If you spin out a Skunkworks venture, you retain 100%.</p>