Sr. Staff AI Engineer - Applied AI

At Rula, this role owns the AI foundation that determines how, and how well, AI shows up across mental healthcare. The focus isn’t on prototypes or isolated features, but on building durable, production-grade generative AI systems that directly power patient engagement, provider workflows, and clinical operations at scale.

About the Role

You’ll operate where architecture, applied research, and real-world constraints meet. The work includes designing core AI platforms, setting technical standards for safety, reliability, and performance, and making principal decisions about how advanced AI is introduced into a regulated, high-stakes care environment. The goal is simple but hard: make AI genuinely useful in clinical contexts, without compromising trust or outcomes.

This is a deeply hands-on role with real technical ownership. You’ll define system architecture, unblock complex engineering problems, and act as a technical multiplier for other engineers working across product surfaces. Success here means creating foundations that others can build on confidently and that hold up under scale, scrutiny, and real patient impact.

Required Qualifications

• 10+ years of software engineering, including 7+ years of experience with Public Cloud (AWS, GCP, etc.), 5+ years designing and scaling distributed systems.
• 5+ years of deep experience in Python and at least one backend language (preferably JavaScript, TypeScript, Java, or Go).
• 2+ years of proven track record building AI-powered products at scale, including hands-on experience with foundation models (OpenAI, Anthropic, Bedrock, Gemini, etc.).
• 2+ years of strong experience in LLM integration patterns (RAG, function calling, agents, memory routing, etc.), or AI orchestration frameworks (eg. LangChain, LlamaIndex, DSPy, Haystack), or vector databases (eg. Pinecone, Weaviate, FAISS, Milvus).
• 3+ years in working with MLOps, data pipelines, evaluation, and observability systems for continuous model improvement.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience architecting secure and compliant AI solutions in regulated environments (HIPAA, GDPR, etc.).
• Familiarity with human-in-the-loop systems and clinical decision support frameworks.
• Experience designing evaluation pipelines for human alignment, factual accuracy, or model interpretability.
• Contributions to open-source AI frameworks or applied research in NLP, healthcare AI, or GenAI safety.
• Experience contributing to early-stage team growth (0 → 1).
• Experience leading or mentoring engineering teams in AI, ML platform, or applied research domains.

Benefits & Perks

• 100% remote work environment (US-based, excluding Hawaii).
• Comprehensive health benefits including medical, dental, vision, life, disability, and FSA/HSA.
• 401(k) plan access.
• Generous time-off policies, including 2 company-wide shutdown weeks each year for self-care.
• Paid parental leave for all parents.
• Employee Assistance Program (EAP).
• Quarterly department stipend for team-building activities.
• Community and employee resource groups.
• Home office stipend and $50 monthly internet/cell phone stipend.
• Wellness at Rula program featuring year-round wellness initiatives and a $50/month wellness stipend.