ML/AI Engineer, Applied AI at Recruiting From Scratch
San Francisco, CA
$180,000–$275,000from the description
Aug 16, 2026
San Francisco, CA
Sep 25, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
This role owns the AI systems layer at an early-stage enterprise AI startup, building production pipelines that convert messy operational data into structured process intelligence. Day-to-day work spans LLM application development, retrieval-augmented generation, evaluation frameworks, agent orchestration, and observability for production AI services. It suits an experienced applied AI engineer comfortable shipping reliable Python-based AI systems and iterating on model quality in a high-ownership startup environment.
Senior level · 4+ years · San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley, CA · Full-time
“or” means any one of them counts — you don't need all of them.
We read this from the posting text with AI. Skim the description below before ruling yourself out.
How this req sits in the market our data
Roughly 310 people in the San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley, CA area plausibly meet what this posting asks for (software developers). range 110–480
Applicant volume Moderate — A normal amount of company. The rare requirements below are what will separate a shortlisted application from the rest.
Rare in this occupation — lead with these, and say what you built with them.
Most people in this occupation already list these. Still required — just not what gets you shortlisted.
What the occupation pays Median $190,744 (middle half $167,095–$224,501). This posting is about at that midpoint.
Estimated from BLS employment for this occupation and area, per-skill prevalence across our listing corpus, and published wage benchmarks — as of Aug 18, 2026. It is a model, not a headcount.
Why we read it this way (7)
The role is open to two locations — San Francisco, CA and New York, NY — both on-site. The CBSA reflects the San Francisco location as the primary listing city; New York (CBSA 35620) is an equally valid work site.
The job title carries no seniority modifier, so advertised seniority is Unspecified; however, the 4–6+ years requirement and full end-to-end ownership of a production AI layer support a Senior classification.
A Bachelor's degree in CS or a related field is listed as 'preferred' and equivalent practical experience is explicitly accepted, so no hard degree requirement is set.
The alt SOC (15-2051 Data Scientists) reflects the heavy ML/evaluation/modeling emphasis; however, the primary day-to-day work is building and shipping production Python services and AI pipelines, which aligns more closely with Software Developers.
Skills such as vector search, hybrid search, reranking, Redis, GCP, golden datasets, and RAG appear under a 'preferred' or secondary technical requirements framing and are marked accordingly.
OpenAI API is listed as the primary named provider; Anthropic, Gemini, and Cohere are explicitly named as interchangeable alternatives in the same requirement.
Ignored 1 non-technology phrase(s) as skills (responsibilities/concepts, not named tools): agent orchestration.
Read the full posting
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