Staff AI Engineer

3w3 weeks ago

Connectly

San Francisco, US · Full-time · $280,000 – $420,000

About this role

Connectly is building the future of conversational commerce in Latin America focused on WhatsApp with an AI-powered sales platform for large retailers. We’re a VC-backed Series B startup with a world-class team from Meta, Google, Uber, and leading Silicon Valley companies. Seeking a visionary Staff AI Engineer to lead company-wide technical strategy for AI systems, reporting directly to the CTO.

This role drives design, development, and deployment of large-scale AI systems powering customer-facing conversational experiences. Blend deep hands-on technical work like model tuning and latency optimization with strategic leadership on architecture and platform vision. Experiment with advanced LLMs for retrieval-augmented generation, multi-agent orchestration, and contextual reasoning.

Lead technical alignment across AI, infrastructure, and application engineering teams spanning Brazil, Bogotá, and San Francisco. Operate in a hybrid organization with distributed teams across Latin America. Partner with platform teams to optimize cost, performance, and scalability across the AI stack.

Collaborate with product and data leadership to turn strategic objectives into measurable outcomes. Serve as a hands-on technical mentor guiding teams and fostering innovation, rigor, and excellence. Shape how Connectly’s technology and AI capabilities evolve to serve millions of retail customers.

Requirements

MS or BS in Computer Science
10+ years of software engineering experience with a strong focus on AI/ML systems
Proven track record of launching customer-facing AI products using LLMs
Expertise in model fine-tuning, prompt engineering, multi-agent orchestration, and AI evaluations
Experience leading technical strategy or architecture initiatives across large or multi-disciplinary engineering organizations
Background in a leading AI or technology company with exposure to world-class engineering
Deep understanding of both the science and engineering of modern AI systems
Proven success in defining and implementing large-scale technical strategies in complex or distributed environments

Responsibilities

Define and execute the technical strategy for Connectly’s AI platform in collaboration with the CTO and senior leadership
Architect, build, and launch production-grade AI systems that power customer-facing conversational experiences at scale
Lead technical alignment across AI, infrastructure, and application engineering teams spanning Brazil, Bogotá, and San Francisco
Experiment with and deploy advanced LLMs to address business use cases including retrieval-augmented generation, multi-agent orchestration, and contextual reasoning
Design evaluation frameworks for AI model quality, latency, safety, and overall customer experience
Develop pipelines for model fine-tuning, prompt optimization, and continuous learning, ensuring high performance and reliability
Partner with platform and infrastructure teams to optimize cost, performance, and scalability across the AI stack
Serve as a hands-on technical mentor, guiding engineering teams and fostering a culture of innovation, rigor, and excellence

Benefits

World-class team from Meta, Google, Uber, and other leading Silicon Valley companies
Hybrid organization with offices in Bogotá and San Francisco
Distributed teams across Latin America, including Brazil where many AI initiatives are based