Staff/Principal AI Engineer

Location: Oakland, California, United States; hybrid schedule with three days per week in the office

Salary: $228,000–$288,000 per year

Company

hirify.global develops AI-powered legal discovery and litigation technology designed to illuminate truth and promote justice.

What you will do

• Lead the design and implementation of the technical AI strategy, including approaches for frontier models and AI applications at trillion-token scale.
• Guide AI engineers across the organization through technical leadership, design reviews, code reviews, talks, and research study groups.
• Collaborate with software engineers, security engineers, data scientists, product leads, designers, and other cross-functional teams.
• Identify opportunities to apply advances in machine learning and AI to legal technology and influence product and engineering direction.
• Work with staff and principal engineers specializing in databases, storage, search, cloud infrastructure, SaaS architecture, data science, and performance.

Requirements

• At least 6 years of experience in machine learning or AI and 8 or more years of overall software engineering experience.
• Experience leading significant AI projects, including production applications of large language models and NLP or text analysis.
• Programming experience in at least one scripting language, such as Python.
• Ability to stay current with AI developments and translate them into practical applications.
• Ability to collaborate across teams, discuss technical details with AI engineers, and explain complex concepts clearly.
• Ability to work onsite in Oakland three days per week.

Nice to have

• Experience with retrieval-based language models or hybrid RAG approaches for large custom datasets.
• Experience designing knowledge storage and representation, including vector and graph databases.
• Experience with multimodal AI, including image, audio, or video processing.
• Experience building AI agents with supervision, backtracking, exception handling, tool use, or MCP.
• Previous experience with SaaS and distributed systems.

Culture & Benefits

• Open, collaborative environment focused on professional growth and continuous learning.
• Annual learning and development stipend and support for professional memberships.
• Equity program, 401(k) with company matching, health, dental, and vision coverage.
• Flexible Spending Accounts, paid parental leave, sick leave, paid vacation, and federal holidays.
• Mental health membership, life and disability insurance, volunteer time, and company-sponsored events.
• Downtown Oakland office near BART, with a Linux laptop and customizable desk setup.

Hiring process

• Onboarding includes sessions covering the product, policies, processes, team structure, and goals.
• Remote and live interviews and assessments must be completed independently without AI assistance unless explicitly stated otherwise.