Senior Applied AI Engineer

Senior Applied AI Engineer (Mid / Senior / Staff)

NYC/hybrid

High-Growth Fintech

Pre–Series C

$230,000 to $260,000 base + equity

What if you could build production AI systems that real users rely on every single day, not demos, not prototypes, not internal tools, but revenue-driving software?

We’re partnering with a high-growth, venture-backed fintech platform that’s quietly transforming a $500B+ industry. In just a few years, they’ve scaled from single-digit millions in revenue to tens of millions, grown assets under management into the billions, and are now entering their next major growth phase ahead of Series C.

They’re hiring aggressively in NYC and a core part of that expansion is a small, elite group of applied AI builders.

This Is Not Research AI

This is applied AI in production.

You’ll be building:

• AI copilots embedded directly into user workflows
• Agentic systems that automate high-friction tasks
• RAG pipelines and intelligent retrieval systems
• Classification, extraction, routing, and recommendation engines
• Workflow automations that meaningfully increase user productivity

If you’ve been building agents yourself

If you’ve automated your own QA or dev workflows

If you’re already 3x’ing your output with AI tools

You’re exactly who they want.

The Kind of Engineer Who Thrives Here

• Have 4–10 years of experience (flexible on level for exceptional talent)
• Have shipped real AI features into production
• Think in systems, not just endpoints
• Have strong 0 to1 ownership instincts
• Enjoy collaborating with product and design
• Prefer small, high-impact teams over large orgs
• Want your work to ship fast and matter
• Growth-stage startup experience is ideal.
• Big tech is welcome — if you were building, not just maintaining.

Tech Environment

• Current stack includes:
• Rails, React, Next.js, Postgres, GraphQL.
• But here’s the reality:
• They care more about what you’ve built than the language you used.
• Python, Node, TypeScript, Go, all very welcome.
• Next.js is a plus.
• Enterprise-heavy, maintenance-only backgrounds are unlikely to thrive here.
• The stack will evolve, this team optimises for velocity, ownership, and leverage.

Why This Role Is Different

What makes this opportunity stand out is how early and real the AI mandate is. The AI layer is genuinely greenfield, and you’ll be working in small, high-autonomy pods where you can take ideas from concept to production in months, not quarters. You’ll have direct access to users, tight feedback loops, and the ability to see what you build adopted quickly and meaningfully influence product direction. This isn’t experimentation in isolation, it’s applied AI embedded into workflows that people rely on daily.

The timing is equally compelling. The company is scaling rapidly in both revenue and assets, approaching Series C with strong momentum and a clear liquidity trajectory. Backed by a founder with multiple successful exits, this is a chance to join at a point where impact is high and upside is real. If you’re deciding between incremental optimisation at a large AI lab or building high-impact AI systems that ship immediately and shape a growing platform, this is the latter.

If this sounds like the kind of environment where you’d thrive, let’s talk.