Software Engineer, Applied AI

A FOUNDATIONAL COMPANY Rilla is on a mission to index the offline world. Today, we’ve built the leading sales coaching software for organizations doing sales offline. We have over 1000 customers, including The Home Depot, KKR, Neighborly, and PulteGroup, using our product to enable AI sales coaching across their organization. We are backed by Google Ventures, Bessemer Ventures, Crew Capital, and Broom Ventures, along with others. We’re an in office team in NYC with builders who operate like high speed reinforcement learners. We obsess over our customers, move at a high velocity, are not afraid of failure, and look to maximize our real-world impact. If you want to build the products and systems for how billions of conversations in the real world are captured and indexed, Rilla is the place to do it. THE ROLE The Applied AI team at Rilla is redefining how humans interact with machines—using voice, intelligence, and a whole new class of data. Every day, you’ll architect and ship AI-powered systems that make it possible for people to talk to Rilla like they would a human. You’ll help build agents that operate natively on real-world audio, extract insights from conversations no one else can even access, and push the boundaries of what’s possible in AI. We’re building: - A voice-first interface that lets users command Rilla directly through natural speech - A search engine that uncovers business-critical insights from voice data that’s never been searchable - A first-of-its-kind audio intelligence pipeline—designed for the messy, noisy, wildly unstructured conversations that happen in the real world, not in an online meeting As an early AI engineer, you’ll shape the foundations of our AI stack and drive the invention of new techniques, tooling, and models. You’ll work across the full AI lifecycle—from data acquisition to real-time inference and user-facing chat interfaces. If you’re obsessive about your craft, think like a founder, and want to be on the frontier of voice and offline AI, this is your team. The scale of the problems we’re solving is unmatched—and the surface area for ownership is only getting bigger. TECHNOLOGIES WE USE - We work primarily in Python and TypeScript, with FastAPI for API development - AI/ML technologies including PyTorch, OpenAI APIs, Baseten, and LiteLLM - Cloud infrastructure with AWS and LiveKit for real-time communications - PostgreSQL, Redis, and S3 for data storage WHAT WE VALUE - An infinite learner. Someone who is relentless in their curiosity. - A customer obsessive. Someone who deeply care about delighting customers and solving real pains, not vanity metrics. - A winning attitude. You thrive with extreme accountability, learning as a team, and both giving and receiving rapid feedback. - Extreme empathy. Our customers are not tech companies. They live and work in the real world. Empathy is critical to arriving at correct solutions. - Unafraid of failure. You take risks. You see failure as an opportunity to learn, grow, and be better the next time. In a weird way, you trick your brain into being excited when you fail, because it means you got a new opportunity to learn more. WHAT WE REQUIRE - Experience building and deploying AI/LLM systems in production - Familiarity with tools that power today's AI: eval frameworks, agent tooling, and prompt engineering - Comfort working directly with customers to understand their needs and solve real-world problems DON’T WORK HERE Please don't join if you're not excited about: 1. Building an AI product for an industry untouched by modern software 2. Constantly talking to and visiting customers in the field 3. Working ~60 hrs/week in person with some of the most ambitious people in NYC 4. Attempting to build a generational company, and the intensity required to do so COMPENSATION The estimated salary range for this position is $200,000 - $300,000/year. Successful candidates with competing offers will receive matching and competitive offers. Total compensation