Staff AI Engineer

Location: New York, New York, United States; comfortable with travel for on-site collaboration.

Salary: $250,000–$300,000 per year; equity or variable pay may apply separately.

Company

Via provides technology and services for modern public transportation systems, supporting hundreds of agency partners worldwide.

What you will do

• Build and ship production-grade AI products end to end, from problem framing and data pipeline design through deployment and live iteration.
• Work directly with partners and city leaders to understand local challenges and develop scalable agentic solutions.
• Lead technical scoping workshops and contribute to intelligent tooling for data consolidation, predictive modelling, real-time decision-making, and LLM-powered experiences.
• Design scalable APIs, manage data flows, and write reliable backend code for AI-driven features.
• Collaborate with product, data science, and operations teams to prioritize high-impact AI opportunities.
• Help establish the technical culture and engineering practices of the AI Labs team.

Requirements

• 10+ years of hands-on experience building full-stack applications and owning features end to end.
• 3+ years of experience working with AI tools or building AI-powered products.
• Deep expertise in LLMs, predictive modelling, and supporting data infrastructure.
• Strong engineering skills in scalable API design, distributed systems, and maintainable backend development.
• Ability to work through ambiguity, take ownership, and collaborate across functions.
• Comfort working directly with users and customers and traveling for on-site collaboration.

Culture & Benefits

• Incubator-style AI team operating like a startup within an established company.
• Autonomy, direct access to leadership, and an opportunity to shape new AI products from the ground up.
• Free medical plans and 401(k) matching.
• Catered lunch on Wednesdays and additional company perks.