About the Role

We're looking for a Staff AI Engineer for our client to set technical direction for how we design, build, and ship AI-powered systems. You'll operate with a high degree of autonomy — architecting solutions, setting standards for the team, and working across the stack from model integration to production infrastructure. This is a hands-on technical leadership role: you'll write code, review designs, and mentor other engineers, while shaping how AI gets built at for years to come. What You'll Do

Set the technical direction and architecture for AI/ML systems across the organization, evaluating build-vs-buy tradeoffs for models, tooling, and infrastructure

Design and ship production systems using LLMs and other AI models — including retrieval, fine-tuning, evaluation, and agentic workflows

Own the reliability, latency, and cost profile of AI systems in production, including monitoring, evaluation pipelines, and guardrails

Partner with product and design to translate ambiguous problems into scoped, shippable AI features

Mentor engineers across the team, raise the bar on code quality and technical rigor, and lead design/architecture reviews

Stay current with the AI/ML landscape and bring in new techniques, models,



and tools where they create real leverage

Collaborate cross-functionally with data, infrastructure, and platform teams to ensure AI systems are well-integrated and maintainable What We're Looking For

10+ years of software engineering experience, including significant hands-on work building and shipping AI/ML systems in production

Deep experience with LLMs and contemporary AI techniques (prompt engineering, RAG, fine-tuning, agentic systems, evaluation frameworks)

Strong systems and software engineering fundamentals — you can design for scale, reliability, and maintainability, not just prototype

Proficiency in Python (or equivalent) and experience with ML/AI frameworks (e.g., PyTorch, LangChain, or similar)

Track record of technical leadership: setting direction, mentoring engineers, and driving cross-team technical decisions

Strong communication skills — able to explain complex technical tradeoffs to both engineers and non-technical stakeholders

Comfort operating with ambiguity and driving projects from 0 to 1

Prior experience as a technical lead, staff engineer, or founding engineer Salary: $180,000 - 210,000

📌 Staff AI Engineer (Vancouver)
🏢 HabileLabs
📍 Vancouver