Staff Machine Learning Engineer (AI)

TL;DR

Staff Machine Learning Engineer (AI): Developing the core execution engine and retrieval pipelines for a custom AI agent service with an accent on agent planning, tool dispatch, and production hardening. Focus on optimizing the retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipeline, integrating third-party connectors, and instrumenting production data for model training.

Location: Hybrid in Melbourne, Australia

Company

hirify.global is a leading customer service software company powering billions of conversations between brands and their customers globally.

What you will do

• Develop the agent execution core, focusing on planning loops, tool dispatch, memory integration, and error recovery.
• Optimize knowledge retrieval pipelines including embedding, reranking, and context assembly to balance quality and latency.
• Implement reliable actions and connectors for hirify.global and third-party APIs like Shopify and Salesforce.
• Build production instrumentation to capture trajectories and reward signals for training domain-specialized ML models.
• Collaborate with Product Security to implement PII filtering, audit logging, and governance patterns.

Requirements

• 5+ years of backend engineering experience with strong Python skills and a track record of shipping production systems.
• Proficiency across the agent stack: LLM APIs, prompt engineering, tool calling, and memory management.
• Experience building for failure cases, including timeouts, error recovery, and graceful degradation.
• Familiarity with Kubernetes, AWS (ECS, S3, ElastiCache), and data tools like Postgres, Redis, and Kafka.
• Must be based in Melbourne, Australia to support the hybrid work model.

Culture & Benefits

• Hybrid way of working that balances in-person collaboration with remote flexibility.
• Opportunity to work with a massive scale of 100,000+ customers and billions of interactions.
• Fast feedback loops with a live product surface where agents resolve real tickets.
• Commitment to a fulfilling and inclusive experience with a focus on global diversity, equity, and inclusion.