AI Engineer

About the company Our client is a financial services company. The role Raydar is recruiting for this role on behalf of our client. Build and ship AI agent systems from early prototype into production, with a focus on reliability, evaluation and safe behaviour. Work across backend APIs and cloud infrastructure, and help set the foundations for a growing AI function. This is a hands-on role for an engineer who can own work independently in a small team. What you'll do - Design and deliver agent-based product features end to end, from early concept through production release. - Own the supporting layer around each agent, including evaluation, guardrails, tool integrations, monitoring, audit trails and error handling. - Build backend services and APIs in Python, and help shape the user-facing interface. - Develop AI systems that work across different large language model providers, managing prompts, tool use and context while balancing performance, cost and maintainability. - Lead AI projects from first idea to production with a high degree of independence. - Set up the patterns, systems and processes that a future AI team will build on. - Track and adopt new models, tools and techniques that improve the product and speed up development. Requirements What we're looking for - 4 or more years of software engineering experience. - Between one and three years spent developing autonomous AI tools and operating them in live environments. - Experience taking an AI agent or LLM-powered feature from zero to one into production, beyond prototypes. - Strong traditional backend foundation, with production experience building APIs and services in Python, Django or FastAPI on AWS. - Hands-on depth with frontier language models, including prompting, tool use and context management. - Comfort owning ambiguous, high-stakes work from start to finish in a small, fast-moving team. Bonus points - Applied AI background at a fast-growing technology company. - Clear instincts for the practical limits and potential of current AI systems. Benefits Compensation and benefits - Base salary: USD 210,000 to 250,000 per year - Equity - Health, dental and vision coverage - Flexible time off Location and work model - New York, NY, United States - On-site, five days a week - Full-time