Artificial Intelligence Engineer

Job Title: AI Engineer Location: New York City Employment Type: Full-time Office Policy: In-office 4 days per week About the Company Our hiring parner is building the first agentic AI platform designed to power multi-unit franchise success, covering the entire journey from brand discovery to portfolio management. They serve three core customer groups: prospective franchisees seeking the right opportunities, current operators automating workflows and uncovering critical insights, and established brands connecting with a qualified pipeline of ambitious partners. Franchising is a massive, trillion-dollar industry with over 800,000 locations across the U.S. and a rapidly expanding international footprint. Multi-unit operators now control more than half of all franchise locations, yet the infrastructure required to build and scale these portfolios remains fragmented and outdated. Backed by leading investors and industry experts, this team is modernizing the ecosystem and unlocking its full potential. About the Role This company is seeking an Applied AI Engineer to build the AI agents and supporting systems that sit at the core of their platform. From franchise discovery and matching through portfolio management and growth, these agents deliver real, tangible value to users. This role requires someone who can translate frontier AI capabilities into reliable, user-facing product experiences. This position sits at the intersection of product, engineering, and AI—designing agent architectures, building evaluation frameworks, and shipping AI features that operators and brands use every day. Examples of projects this engineer might work on include: Refining the core matching logic that connects franchisees with the best brands, continuously evolving it as new signals from users and feedback become available. Designing and building a lead enrichment agent that leverages publicly available data and partners with the go-to-market team to power an AI-driven pipeline of high-fit leads. Developing a franchise development agent that combines chat, a qualifying voice interview, and automated scoring to replace manual lead intake processes for brands. What You'll Do Design, build, and optimize the AI agents and LLM-powered features that are critical components of the product. Develop sophisticated agent architectures including tool use, planning, memory, retrieval, and multi-step reasoning capabilities. Build evaluation frameworks and feedback loops to measure and continuously improve agent quality and performance. Partner closely with the Data Engineering team to shape the data and retrieval layers that power the agents. Collaborate with full-stack engineers and designers to integrate AI capabilities into polished, user-facing experiences. Stay at the forefront of the field—evaluate new models, techniques, and tooling, and bring the best of them into the stack. Inform product direction by understanding what becomes possible as AI capabilities evolve. Who You Are Possesses 4+ years of engineering experience, with meaningful hands-on experience building LLM-powered or AI-native products in production environments. Has deep familiarity with the modern AI stack, including foundation model APIs, prompt engineering, tool use, agent frameworks, multi-agent and long-running agent coordination, memory and retrieval, agent harnesses, and evaluation methodologies. Demonstrates strong general software engineering fundamentals and the ability to build production-grade services. Approaches work with a product-minded perspective, thinking critically about what users actually need and using AI as a means to deliver real value. Embraces a high-ownership mindset, taking agents from prototype to production and holding oneself accountable to a high standard. Is naturally curious and ambitious, with a passion for going deep on the frontier of AI capabilities and turning them into real product value. Has a strong bias for action, shipping quickly and measuring honestly without waiting for perfect conditions or complete information. Is fully "AI-native" in how they work, leveraging AI coding tools to amplify personal velocity and impact. This individual is eager to work in an environment where AI is a core pillar of both the product and internal operations, even if their current company does not fully embrace it. Prior experience in a startup or early-stage environment is a plus. An interest in franchising and the local business landscape is also a plus. Why Join the Team Meaningful Impact: Play a direct role in supporting local communities by empowering individual operators and elevating great franchise brands. Ownership & Responsibility: Own significant pieces of the business and have a direct influence on the company's strategic direction. AI-Native Culture: Be part of a team that is actively pushing the boundaries of what's possible with AI, both in their product and their internal workflows. Benefits: Enjoy comprehensive benefits including fully-covered healthcare options and unlimited PTO. In-Person Team: Collaborate daily with the founding team in a dynamic New York City office environment. Show more Show less