Applied AI Engineer

About Rive

Rive is where designers, animators, and developers build interactive experiences. Design, animate, and code in one place. What you build in the editor is what ships in your app, game, or website. No mockups, no prototypes, no handoff. The real thing.

Companies like Spotify, Duolingo, LinkedIn, Google, and Fortune 500 automakers use our open-source runtimes to build once and ship everywhere — websites, apps, games, and vehicles.

With Rive, designers and developers work with the same tools. No silos. What you see in the editor is what ships in production.

How We Think About AI

Al tools want to make everyone an artist. We'd rather make artists dangerous

Rive's AI isn't replacing artists, it’s giving creatives the power to build things they couldn't before. Custom particle systems. Cloners. Path effects. Data connections. Physics systems. Full games. Not by doing the work for them, but by removing the barriers between what they can imagine and what they can ship.

We're building a professional tool for designers, animators, and developers. AI should expand what they can do. It should increase the ceiling for creative people, not lower the floor for everybody.

If that distinction matters to you, keep reading.

The Role

We're looking for an Applied AI Engineer to own and accelerate AI across Rive's editor. Reporting to the CEO and CTO you'll spend your time on two things:

1. Improving Rive's AI agent for designers, animators, and developers. We shipped an AI agent that helps you write scripts, builds custom tools (particle systems, cloners, path effects, physics systems), connect data, and create full games without leaving the editor. It gets rid of tedious design work, like creating complex layouts, view models, and state machines. Your job is to make it better. Faster. Smarter.

2. Finding new ways to apply AI to the editor. The AI landscape moves quickly. New models ship every week. In this role you are the person who sees that, understands what it means for Rive, and prototypes how it could work in our editor. Not everything will ship, but you will always be exploring.

Why This Role Matters

Rive sits at the intersection of design, animation, and code. Most AI tools are focused on one of these. We need someone who can think across all three and figure out how AI makes each of them better without losing the craft.

This is a full-time focus, not a side project. We believe AI will fundamentally change how people build interactive experiences, and we want someone dedicated to making sure Rive leads that shift.

What You'll Do

• Build new AI-powered workflows for designers, animators, and developers in the Rive Editor
• Improve the AI agent's ability to write Rive scripts (Luau), build state machines, design layouts, animate, and work with data binding
• Stay on top of new AI models, APIs, and techniques and evaluate how they apply to Rive
• Work closely with the editor team to ship features
• Talk to users to understand where AI can remove friction in their creative workflow

Requirements

What We're Looking For

• An experienced software product engineering background
• Deep knowledge of current AI/ML landscape (LLMs, multimodal models, code generation, image/video models)
• Experience integrating AI into a product (not just using APIs, but building the product layer around them)
• Self-directed. We're not going to hand you a spec. You will be the person telling us what to build next
• Bias toward shipping. Prototypes are great, but production is what matters
• A taste for creative tools. You don't need to be a designer, but should understand how designers and developers think about their work

Nice to Have

• Experience with creative or design tools (animation, motion, game engines, visual editors)
• Familiarity with Luau, TypeScript, or similar scripting languages
• Experience with ucode generation / AI coding assistants
• Understanding of vector graphics, state machines, or interactive content

Location:  San Francisco preferred (or someone open to self-relocation to SF) to work in person with the Editor team in our Potrero Hill office.  Rive in general is a remote company but most of the editor team is in SF, and working in the office with them on a regular basis is important to the success of this role.

Benefits

Compensation and benefits: We offer comprehensive health, dental, and vision coverage as well as stock options. Rive is committed to fair and equitable compensation practices. Compensation may depend on various factors including, but not limited to relevant work experience and skills. The salary range for this role is $180,000 to $215,000.

At Rive we are a global group of passionate designers and developers who believe in transparency, failing fast, quick iteration, and experimentation. We aim to build a diverse and inclusive culture where everyone feels supported.

We have an incredible opportunity to be game changers in the world of creating interactive content. Help us accelerate the design industry's transition to Rive!

A human will read your resume, cover letter, and answers to the application questions so please take a minute and tell us more about you!