Applied AI Engineer

Applied AI Engineer

Location: Austin, TX (Hybrid - 3 days in-office)

Compensation: $200k - $250k base + Equity

Start Date: Q1 2026

Software engineering is being turned on its head. While tools like Claude and GitHub Copilot are great for repetitive tasks, the real challenge lies in the "Last Mile": building the infrastructure and workflows that allow a team to use AI to its maximum potential without sacrificing the rigors of mission-critical software.

We are looking for an exceptional Applied AI Engineer to join our team in Austin. We are a well-funded ($40M) startup backed by top-tier investors like Paradigm and Electric Capital. We are currently rebuilding the infrastructure of the global financial system—bringing it fully on-chain to make it faster and safer. Your mission is to level up our entire organization’s impact by embedding AI deeply into how we engineer and operate. You will stay at the absolute frontier of AI development, ensuring our team evolves from "using AI" to "effectively managing a team of AI agents" with consistent quality and guardrails.

What You Will Do:

• Accelerate Engineering Velocity: Solve the gap between the frontier of AI research and the frontier of mission-critical production systems.
• Contribute Production Code: This is a hands-on engineering role. You will contribute directly to our core product to ensure your AI workflows actually work in a high-stakes production environment.
• Shape AI Product Features: Partner with product and engineering to ideate and prototype AI-powered features for our flagship financial platform.
• Systematize AI Usage: Create the orchestration layers, CI/CD integrations, and custom agent configurations that help the entire team work more effectively.
• Stay Ahead of the Curve: Act as the internal go-to expert for new models and tools, experimenting constantly and sharing learnings so adoption sticks across the team.

Requirements

• Strong Engineer First: You are a senior or mid-senior engineer who has shipped and owned meaningful systems in production. You have strong system-design instincts and a high bar for code quality.
• AI Obsessed: You code every day and spend your nights and weekends experimenting with the latest models and productivity tools.
• Solutions-Driven: You take pride in being the person who unblocks others. You are personable and thrive in a collaborative environment.
• Production-Grounded: You treat AI infrastructure as a production system. You are comfortable with custom agent configs, orchestration layers, and managing agents across remote environments.
• Curious & Gritty: You are gleefully curious about optimization and comfortable operating in the ambiguity of a fast-moving startup.

This role is NOT a fit if:

• You are looking for pure AI research or model training (we focus on applying models to workflows).
• You want to work fully remotely (we value in-person collaboration 3 days a week in Austin).
• You are primarily looking to lead a team of people; for the foreseeable future, you will be leading a team of AI agents.

Benefits

• Career-Defining Scope: Help define the "new normal" for how engineering teams build mission-critical systems.
• Advanced Tech Stack: "Nerd out" as part of your day-to-day job. Your core responsibility is to experiment with the coolest tech available.
• World-Class Team: Work alongside engineers and leaders from Goldman Sachs, Circle, Bloomberg, Kraken, and Ethereum.
• Comprehensive Package: * Competitive base salary ($200k-$250k) and meaningful equity.

• Medical, dental, and vision healthcare.
• 401(k) and generous PTO.
• A high-energy, mission-driven office environment in Austin.

Due to the high volume of applications we anticipate, we regret that we are unable to provide individual feedback to all candidates. If you do not hear back from us within 4 weeks of your application, please assume that you have not been successful on this occasion. We genuinely appreciate your interest and wish you the best in your job search.

Commitment to Equality and Accessibility:

At MLabs, we are committed to offer equal opportunities to all candidates. We ensure no discrimination, accessible job adverts, and providing information in accessible formats. Our goal is to foster a diverse, inclusive workplace with equal opportunities for all. If you need any reasonable adjustments during any part of the hiring process or you would like to see the job-advert in an accessible format please let us know at the earliest opportunity by emailing [email protected].

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