Applied AI Software Engineer

Job Description:

Software is eating the world, but AI is eating software. We live in unprecedented times – AI has the potential to exponentially augment human intelligence. Every person will have a personal tutor, coach, assistant, personal shopper, travel guide, and therapist throughout life. As the world adjusts to this new reality, leading platform companies are scrambling to build LLMs at billion scale, while large enterprises figure out how to add it to their products. 

At Scale, our Enterprise team works with a variety of customers looking to be at the forefront of incorporating Generative AI capabilities into their services. Forward Deployed ML Engineers (FDMLEs) work directly with our customers to build and own robust, production-grade services which directly integrate into their products. This exciting role lies at the intersection of customer delivery and ML engineering, providing you with a wealth of experience and stimulating both sides of your brain. In this role, your daily tasks may include engaging in discussions with customers and understanding their generative AI needs and using platform tools and packages to finetune and iterate on modeling experiments using Large Language Models (LLM) or Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG). Your experiments should be focused around data and metrics that drive continuous improvement. This includes designing data-driven experiments focused on optimizing model performance by deeply understanding the training data and model outputs to systematically move key metrics. If you are excited about shaping the future of the data-centric AI movement, we would love to hear from you!

You will:

  • Own, plan, and optimize our Enterprise customer’s Generative AI problems, thereby becoming the ML voice in the room that our customers turn to for solutions
  • Understand the tools available for optimizing performance around LLMs and how to most appropriately apply or combine them in different scenarios
  • Be analytically rigorous by asking probing questions of the data and results to root out model weaknesses 
  • Demonstrate strong proficiency for writing, testing, and debugging Python code, capable of solving programming problems such as basic algorithms and data structure manipulations
  • Have experience gathering business requirements and translating them into technical solutions 
  • Meet regularly with customer teams onsite and virtually, collaborating cross-functionally with all teams responsible for their data and ML needs
  • Have strong communication skills and the ability to explain technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders
  • Push production code in multiple development environments, writing and debugging code directly in both our customer’s and Scale’s codebases.
  • Deeply understand the AI strategy, goals, and needs of the customers
  • Build deep relationships with technical stakeholders at all levels and across all roles, both internally and externally
  • Be able and willing to multi-task and learn new technologies quickly

Ideally you'd have:

  • Strong engineering background: a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Mathematics, or another quantitative field or equivalent strong engineering background.
  • 3+ years of engineering experience, post-graduation in a client-facing setting
  • At least 2 years of model training experience, specifically in translating business problems into data/model problems.
  • Deep familiarity with a data-driven approach when iterating on machine learning models and how changes in datasets can influence model results
  • Experience working with cloud technology stack (eg. AWS or GCP) and developing machine learning models in a cloud environment
  • Experience operating in a fast-paced environment with ambiguity
  • Proficiency in Python to write, test and debug code using common libraries (ie numpy, pandas) and create functions to break down problems into modular components focused on robustness, readability and maintainability

Nice to haves:

  • Strong knowledge of software engineering best practices
  • Have experience with AI platforms and technologies, including generative models and LLMs
  • Have built applications taking advantage of Generative AI in real, production use cases
  • Familiarity with state of the art LLMs and their strengths/weaknesses

Compensation packages at Scale for eligible roles include base salary, equity, and benefits. The range displayed on each job posting reflects the minimum and maximum target for new hire salaries for the position, determined by work location and additional factors, including job-related skills, experience, interview performance, and relevant education or training. Scale employees in eligible roles are also granted equity based compensation, subject to Board of Director approval. Your recruiter can share more about the specific salary range for your preferred location during the hiring process, and confirm whether the hired role will be eligible for equity grant. You’ll also receive benefits including, but not limited to: Comprehensive health, dental and vision coverage, retirement benefits, a learning and development stipend, and generous PTO. Additionally, this role may be eligible for additional benefits such as a commuter stipend.

Please reference the job posting's subtitle for where this position will be located. For pay transparency purposes, the base salary range for this full-time position in the locations of San Francisco, New York, Seattle is:
$160,000$192,000 USD

About Us:

At Scale, we believe that the transition from traditional software to AI is one of the most important shifts of our time. Our mission is to make that happen faster across every industry, and our team is transforming how organizations build and deploy AI.  Our products power the world's most advanced LLMs, generative models, and computer vision models. We are trusted by generative AI companies such as OpenAI, Meta, and Microsoft, government agencies like the U.S. Army and U.S. Air Force, and enterprises including GM and Accenture. We are expanding our team to accelerate the development of AI applications.

We believe that everyone should be able to bring their whole selves to work, which is why we are proud to be an affirmative action employer and inclusive and equal opportunity workplace. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability status, gender identity or Veteran status. 

We are committed to working with and providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with physical and mental disabilities. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation in the application or recruiting process due to a disability, please contact us at accommodations@scale.com. Please see the United States Department of Labor's Know Your Rights poster for additional information.

We comply with the United States Department of Labor's Pay Transparency provision

PLEASE NOTE: We collect, retain and use personal data for our professional business purposes, including notifying you of job opportunities that may be of interest and sharing with our affiliates. We limit the personal data we collect to that which we believe is appropriate and necessary to manage applicants’ needs, provide our services, and comply with applicable laws. Any information we collect in connection with your application will be treated in accordance with our internal policies and programs designed to protect personal data.

Scale AI

Scale AI

  • 📍 US (San Francisco, CA; New York, NY)
  • 📝 Full Time
  • 💰 USD $160,000 - $192,000
  • 📅 1 day ago