SAN FRANCISCO DATA & AI STAFFING
OVERVIEW
We work with some of San Franciscos' leading brands to provide recruitment solutions across the Data & AI industries.
Harnham is committed to helping companies find the best talent for their Data & AI roles in San Francisco, roles including AI Engineers and Architects, as well as machine learning engineers. We do this through our unparalleled customer service throughout the recruitment process.
We provide in-depth guidance during the hiring process in addition to offering insights based on our research on the industry. Our consultants are also well-versed in their markets so they’re able to guide you to the right candidate for your job.
Our Team who specializes in Data & AI Staffing in San Francisco also has an extensive database of Data & AI professionals in the Bay area so we have the best chance to find the best candidate for any role your company has.
DATA & AI RECRUITMENT AND STAFFING
HOW WE DO IT
Just like the Data & AI professionals we place, Harnham use tried and tested models in our recruitment processes.
By gaining valuable market knowledge across a range of industries and regions, Harnham can provide a service that is second to none within our marketplace.
We have seen unprecedented growth in our specialist sector and always have a wide range of vacancies at both junior and senior levels including AI jobs, Data Science jobs, Data Analyst jobs, and Big Data jobs, all available throughout the UK, France, United States, and the Netherlands. For more insight, contact Team Data & AI Staffing San Francisco now.
WHAT SETS US APART FROM OTHER SAN FRANCISCO DATA & AI RECRUITMENT AGENCIES?
We stand out because we have a deep understanding of the Data and AI industry in San Francisco based on our many years of experience.Â
We also form a tight-knit bond with our clients that makes them want to stick with us long-term.
Also, our recruitment process is tailored to the data & AI industry and the market in San Francisco, and our teams understand the nuances of the industry and are well-versed in their respective markets.
Additionally, we do research and provide insights on things such as salary and diversity within the data industry, with our annual salary and diversity guides which helps guide our clients on hiring decisions. If you need more insight, speak to Team Data & AI Staffing San Francisco now!
JOBS
LATEST SAN FRANCISCO
DATA JOBS
Harnham are a specialist Data & AI Recruitment business with teams that only focus on niche areas.
Staff/Principal Machine Learning Engineer
San Francisco
$250000 - $350000
+ Data Science & AI
PermanentSan Francisco, California
To Apply for this Job Click Here
About the Company
We are a rapidly growing technology organization focused on helping enterprises unlock greater value from their data through advanced artificial intelligence and machine learning solutions. Our platform empowers organizations to transform complex data assets into actionable insights by combining intelligent automation, modern data engineering practices, and intuitive user experiences. We work with some of the most sophisticated data environments in the world and are building the next generation of AI-powered enterprise software.
The Opportunity
As an AI/ML Engineer, you will play a key role in designing and delivering intelligent systems that power advanced automation, knowledge retrieval, code generation, and decision-support capabilities. This position offers significant ownership and influence over technical direction, architecture decisions, and the development of scalable AI solutions.
You will collaborate closely with engineering, product, and platform teams to create AI-driven experiences that solve complex business and technical challenges. The level and scope of responsibility will be aligned to experience, with opportunities for substantial impact at every level.
Key Responsibilities
AI Agent Architecture & Optimization
- Design, develop, and enhance multi-step AI agents capable of reasoning, planning, and executing complex workflows.
- Define strategies for context management, task decomposition, error handling, and response quality.
- Establish evaluation frameworks and performance benchmarks to continuously improve agent effectiveness.
- Drive experimentation and innovation across emerging AI technologies and methodologies.
Knowledge Retrieval & Information Systems
- Design and maintain retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines and supporting infrastructure.
- Develop solutions leveraging vector search, knowledge graphs, semantic search, and related technologies.
- Create knowledge representations that enable accurate reasoning across structured and unstructured enterprise data.
- Improve information retrieval quality, relevance, and scalability.
AI-Powered Code Generation & Data Processing
- Build and optimize systems that convert natural language requests into reliable technical outputs.
- Develop prompt engineering strategies, model selection approaches, and evaluation methodologies.
- Implement safeguards, validation mechanisms, and quality controls for AI-generated outputs.
- Support intelligent automation across data transformation, analytics, and engineering workflows.
Production-Scale AI Systems
- Deploy, monitor, and optimize AI solutions operating in large-scale production environments.
- Improve latency, throughput, reliability, observability, and operational efficiency.
- Evaluate tradeoffs between model optimization, infrastructure improvements, and system architecture changes.
- Contribute to best practices for AI governance, monitoring, and lifecycle management.
Qualifications
What We’re Looking For
- Proven experience developing and supporting AI/ML systems in production environments.
- Strong understanding of evaluation methodologies, performance measurement, and failure analysis.
- Demonstrated ability to make architectural decisions in ambiguous or rapidly evolving technical environments.
- Passion for learning new technologies and adapting to emerging industry trends.
- Strong communication skills with the ability to influence technical direction and participate in engineering design discussions.
- Experience balancing rapid execution with long-term system scalability and maintainability.
Experience
- Approximately 4+ years of professional software engineering experience with meaningful exposure to machine learning, artificial intelligence, or related technologies.
- Candidates ranging from experienced individual contributors to senior technical leaders are encouraged to apply.
Preferred Technical Background
Core Technologies
- Strong programming skills in Python.
- Hands-on experience with large language models (LLMs), generative AI applications, and agent-based systems.
- Experience building retrieval systems using vector databases, semantic search technologies, and/or knowledge graphs.
- Familiarity with cloud-native architectures and distributed systems.
Nice-to-Have Experience
- Knowledge of Kubernetes and modern cloud platforms.
- Experience with Scala, Go, or other systems-level languages.
- Experience working with modern analytics and data processing platforms.
- Exposure to technologies such as Apache Spark, cloud data warehouses, data lakes, and distributed computing frameworks.
- Background in data engineering, business intelligence, analytics, or large-scale data processing environments.
Why Join Us?
- Opportunity to work on cutting-edge AI and machine learning challenges.
- Meaningful ownership and influence over technical direction and product innovation.
- Collaborative environment with highly talented engineers and technical leaders.
- Professional growth opportunities and support for continued learning.
- Competitive compensation package, equity opportunities, and comprehensive benefits.
- Flexible work arrangements and a culture that values impact, innovation, and execution.
Equal Opportunity Employer
We are committed to creating a diverse and inclusive workplace. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity, or any other protected characteristic under applicable law.

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Principal AI Engineer
San Francisco
$250000 - $345000
+ Data Science & AI
PermanentSan Francisco, California
To Apply for this Job Click Here
Principal AI Engineer
San Francisco, CA (Hybrid)
Upwards of $300K + Equity
About the Role
We’re hiring a Principal AI Engineer to join a high-performing engineering team building intelligent software and scalable AI capabilities that power core products across the business.
This is a hands-on technical leadership position for someone who enjoys solving complex engineering challenges, defining technical direction, and delivering production-grade software. You’ll work across the full development lifecycle-from architecture and design through implementation, deployment, and continuous improvement.
You’ll collaborate closely with engineering, product, and leadership teams to build reliable, scalable systems that leverage modern AI technologies to solve real business problems.
What You’ll Do
Technical Leadership
- Lead the architecture, design, and delivery of large-scale engineering initiatives.
- Define technical strategy for complex projects and influence long-term platform direction.
- Drive engineering decisions that prioritize scalability, performance, reliability, and maintainability.
- Mentor engineers and help establish technical best practices across the organization.
AI Platform & Product Development
- Design and build production-ready AI capabilities integrated into customer-facing products.
- Develop scalable backend services and distributed systems that support intelligent application features.
- Build reliable data processing and information management capabilities that improve product functionality.
- Improve the performance, quality, and scalability of AI-powered features through continuous iteration and measurement.
- Partner with cross-functional teams to identify opportunities where AI can enhance products, workflows, and customer experiences.
Engineering Excellence
- Lead projects from concept through production deployment.
- Collaborate across Product, Engineering, and Infrastructure teams to deliver robust technical solutions.
- Contribute to architectural standards, engineering processes, and platform evolution.
- Balance rapid product delivery with long-term technical sustainability.
What We’re Looking For
- Extensive experience building and shipping large-scale software systems.
- Strong background in backend engineering and modern AI or machine learning applications.
- Experience designing scalable cloud-native architectures and distributed systems.
- Familiarity with modern AI technologies, large language models, information retrieval techniques, or intelligent automation.
- Strong programming skills in one or more languages such as Python, Go, Java, or TypeScript.
- Experience working with cloud platforms, APIs, and modern software infrastructure.
- Demonstrated success leading complex technical initiatives from architecture through production.
- Comfortable operating with a high degree of autonomy and solving open-ended technical problems.
- Experience mentoring engineers or providing technical leadership across teams.
Why Join?
You’ll join an engineering-led organization where AI is an integral part of the product strategy rather than a standalone research initiative.
This role offers significant ownership, the opportunity to influence technical direction, and the chance to solve challenging engineering problems while building scalable software used in production every day.

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AI Engineer
San Francisco, CA
$150000 - $190000
+ Data Science & AI
PermanentSan Francisco, California
To Apply for this Job Click Here
AI ENGINEER / ML ENGINEER – APPLIED AI & LLM SYSTEMS
$150,000 – $190,000 BASE SALARY
REMOTE / HYBRID (U.S.)
THE COMPANY
A high-growth technology company building AI-powered solutions to automate complex healthcare data workflows at scale.
- Focused on unstructured clinical and healthcare data transformation
- AI is core to the company’s product and long-term strategy
- Engineering-first culture with strong technical leadership
- Works with large-scale, real-world datasets in regulated environments
- Emphasis on production systems, not experimentation-only AI
THE ROLE
As an AI Engineer / ML Engineer, you’ll design, build, and scale production-grade AI systems focused on document processing, NLP, and LLM-powered workflows.
A deeply technical, hands-on engineering role with high ownership across the full AI lifecycle.
- Build and deploy scalable AI/ML systems using Python and PySpark
- Develop LLM and NLP pipelines for document extraction, structuring, and summarization
- Design and optimize batch pipelines and orchestration workflows (Airflow, Databricks, etc.)
- Productionize AI systems in collaboration with data and platform engineering teams
- Improve performance, latency, reliability, and observability of AI services
- Create evaluation and validation frameworks for model and system quality
- Work with large-scale structured and unstructured datasets
- Contribute to architecture decisions across AI infrastructure and model serving
YOUR SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE
4-10+ years of experience in AI Engineering, ML Engineering, MLOps, or Applied AI
Core Expertise:
- Building and deploying production AI/ML systems
- LLMs, NLP pipelines, or RAG-based systems
- Large-scale data processing and distributed computing
Technical Skills:
- Strong Python engineering background
- PySpark, Spark, Databricks, or similar distributed data tools
- Airflow or equivalent orchestration frameworks
- SQL and data pipeline development
- Experience with AWS, GCP, or Azure
- Monitoring, observability, and system optimization
Additional:
- Experience working with messy, real-world data environments
- Strong problem-solving and systems-thinking mindset
- Ability to own systems end-to-end from design to production
NICE TO HAVE
- Healthcare, clinical, or life sciences experience
- Familiarity with EHR/EMR, claims, or regulated datasets
- Experience with OCR, document parsing, or text extraction pipelines
- Exposure to MLflow, SageMaker, Vertex AI, or model serving frameworks
THE BENEFITS
- $150K – $190K base salary
- Flexible remote / hybrid work options
- High-impact role working on core AI systems
- Strong engineering culture with modern tooling
- Opportunity to shape architecture and technical direction
- Clear growth into senior and staff-level engineering roles
WHY THIS ROLE
This isn’t a research-only or prototype-heavy role-you’ll build AI systems that operate in production at scale.
You’ll work on meaningful, real-world problems where AI directly drives product value, with the opportunity to influence architecture, tooling, and long-term technical strategy.

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Staff Data Scientist, Product Analytics
San Francisco
$200000 - $250000
+ Advanced Analytics & Marketing Insights
PermanentSan Francisco, California
To Apply for this Job Click Here
Job Title: Staff Data Scientist
Location: Remote (US Only)
Salary: $200-250k base + equity
About the Company:
Join a mission-focused organization dedicated to revolutionizing global education by providing innovative learning experiences beyond the traditional classroom. The company’s app is widely used across U.S. schools and impacts millions of children worldwide.
Their team is made up of talented and creative professionals with backgrounds in education and top consumer internet companies such as Instagram, Netflix, Dropbox, Stripe, and Uber. They cultivate an environment where top talent can thrive. If you’re eager to work with some of the best minds in the industry, we encourage you to apply!
Position Summary:
As a Staff Data Scientist, you will be a key player in developing the world’s leading consumer education platform. You will be part of a high-achieving, cross-functional team working closely with product, engineering, and design to shape the company’s strategic direction and tackle challenging product and business issues.
Key Responsibilities:
- Utilize data-driven insights to inform decisions and drive our brand toward new milestones
- Work collaboratively with various teams to discover user insights and pinpoint essential product improvements
- Design and analyze AB/multivariate tests to derive actionable conclusions that boost user engagement
- Lead data science projects, influencing strategic choices and addressing complex problems
Your Skills and Experience:
- 8+ years of experience in data science and product analytics
- Experience in the consumer technology sector
- Proficient in writing efficient SQL queries for large datasets
- Skilled in designing and analyzing A/B tests
- Strong understanding of growth strategies for consumer products
- Experience working in fast-paced startup environments
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills
- Strategic thinker with a keen focus on product development
- Innovative approach to using data to drive product strategy

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Staff Finance Data Scientist – Consumption Forecasting
San Francisco
$240000 - $300000
+ Data Science & AI
PermanentSan Francisco, California
To Apply for this Job Click Here
Staff Data Scientist, Finance – Consumption Forecasting
Location: San Francisco or New York | Hybrid (3 days per week in office)
Salary: $240-300k base + bonus + equity (RSUs)
This is a rare chance to own forecasting infrastructure at the center of a high-growth, consumption-based developer platform, one that powers some of the world’s most dynamic applications and scales with every developer and enterprise building on it.
As a consumption-based business, forecasting usage across compute, bandwidth, edge, and storage isn’t a support function. It’s foundational to how we plan infrastructure, revenue, and long-term strategy. This role exists to lead that work at the highest level.
What you’ll own
This is a senior individual contributor role with organization-wide impact. You’ll define forecasting methodology, build systems that scale with a rapidly growing platform, and sit at the intersection of Finance, Infrastructure, Product, and GTM with direct visibility to executive leadership.
- Own production revenue forecasting end-to-end: model development, backtesting, deployment, monitoring, and iteration from first principles to live system
- Build forecasting systems that account for usage-based pricing dynamics, consumption patterns, and customer lifecycle across the platform, built for how this business actually works, not retrofitted SaaS models
- Design hierarchical forecasting models across account, cohort, segment, and global aggregate levels, covering operational, quarterly, and long-range planning cycles
- Establish backtesting, monitoring, and explainability standards that make forecast accuracy transparent and defensible
- Build scenario simulation frameworks to evaluate pricing changes, packaging adjustments, and product launches
- Partner with Finance on board-level reporting, with Infrastructure Engineering on capacity planning, and with Product and GTM on adoption curves and usage drivers
- Set forecasting best practices across the broader Data organization
What we’re looking for
- 7+ years in data science, quantitative analytics, or applied statistics at senior or staff level
- Deep expertise in time-series forecasting and statistical modelling in a usage-based or SaaS environment
- Proven track record building and productionizing ML systems at scale
- Strong Python and SQL, with experience on large-scale usage and billing datasets
- Familiarity with probabilistic modelling, hierarchical forecasting, and causal inference
- Experience partnering with Finance or executive leadership on planning cycles
- Comfortable operating autonomously in fast-moving, ambiguous environments
Nice to have
- Background in cloud infrastructure, developer tools, or consumption-based revenue models
- Familiarity with modern data stacks: Snowflake, Delta Lake, dbt, Airflow
- Prior technical mentorship or informal leadership experience

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Lead AI Engineer
San Francisco
$250000 - $300000
+ Data Science & AI
PermanentSan Francisco, California
To Apply for this Job Click Here
Lead AI Engineer
Location: San Francisco Bay Area | Hybrid
Salary: $250-300k + Equity
Join a well-funded, AI-native startup at the forefront of redefining how digital products are designed and shipped.
This team is building a next-generation design platform where every screen is real, production-ready code. Designers work directly in the medium that ships, not static mockups, with AI deeply embedded into the workflow to accelerate iteration while preserving precision, consistency, and control.
Backed by top-tier Bay Area investors and senior product leaders from companies including Shopify, Notion, Dropbox, Stripe, and OpenAI, the company has strong runway, a high bar for talent, and ambitious plans ahead.
They’re now hiring their first dedicated Lead AI Engineer to own the model layer and drive AI performance across the product.
The Opportunity
You’ll work directly with the CTO and founding team to define and execute the AI strategy at the model level.
This is a hands-on, production-focused AI engineering role centered on:
- Fine-tuning LLMs for real-world use cases
- Optimizing inference speed, cost, and reliability
- Designing and deploying custom Small Language Models (SLMs)
- Establishing evaluation, benchmarking, and observability standards
What You’ll Be Responsible For
Fine-Tuning & Model Strategy
- Own fine-tuning workflows (LoRA, adapters, distillation, full fine-tuning)
- Decide when to fine-tune vs optimize at the system or prompt level
- Iterate models based on production feedback
- Balance quality, latency, and cost tradeoffs
Model Optimization & Performance
- Improve inference speed and throughput
- Reduce cost per request
- Enhance reliability and output consistency
- Define model evaluation and benchmarking frameworks
Custom SLM Development
- Design and train custom SLMs for specific design-to-code workflows
- Identify when smaller models outperform larger ones
- Deploy and maintain real-time, streaming AI systems
- Support multi-step and agentic AI capabilities within the product
What They’re Looking For
- 5+ years of software engineering experience
- 2+ years building with LLMs in production environments
- Proven hands-on fine-tuning experience (LoRA, distillation, adapters, etc.)
- Experience deploying custom or specialized models
- Strong intuition around inference tradeoffs: latency, throughput, cost, reliability
- Proficiency in Python and TypeScript / Node.js
Nice to have:
- ONNX runtime or model optimization tooling
- Experience with orchestration frameworks (e.g., LangChain)
- WebSockets, Redis, or real-time streaming systems
- Background in AI-native or code-generation products
- A PhD or advanced degree is welcomed, but demonstrated production impact is the priority.

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AI Engineer
San Francisco
$200000 - $220000
+ Life Science Analytics
PermanentSan Francisco, California
To Apply for this Job Click Here
AI Engineer
San Francisco, California
Remote
$200,000 – $220,000 + Equity
About the Company
This innovative health tech startup is working to improve the oncology drug development process by providing better patient data to drug developers as well as better access to clinical trials for patients. This series B startup is expending to meet demand.
About the Role
As an AI Engineer, you will design and deliver applied AI systems (LLMs/CV/multimodal) that automate clinical variable abstraction and clinical note generation-with repeatable validation, robust documentation, and HITL feedback loops. Heavy emphasis on data engineering and backend rigor to make models usable and efficient.
Role Responsibilities
- Build models and pipelines across EMR/EHR, imaging, clinical reports
- Translate ambiguous clinical requirements into measurable ML objectives
- Define metrics, design experiments, estimate error; review peer work
- Deliver validated AI components for abstraction/note generation; meaningfully reduce manual QA workload via HITL; standardize documentation/testing; establish performant data manipulation patterns (e.g., PySpark, SQL/Postgres) that speed iteration.
Key Requirements
- Python
- Pytorch or Tensorflow
- Data engineering: PySpark, SQL, Postgres, query tuning, data modeling
- Cloud data platforms (e.g., Databricks, S3/Snowflake/Azure/GCP)
- Nice to have experience in oncology/biotech/health tech

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Clinical Data Scientist
San Francisco
$160000 - $190000
+ Data Science & AI
PermanentSan Francisco, California
To Apply for this Job Click Here
Clinical Data Scientist
San Francisco, California
Remote
$160,000 – $190,000 + Equity
About the Company
This innovative health tech startup is working to improve the oncology drug development process by providing better patient data to drug developers as well as better access to clinical trials for patients. This series B startup is expending to meet demand.
About the Role
As a Clinical Data Scientist, you’ll execute the last leg of the clinical data pipeline by transforming, cleaning, validating, and delivering high‑quality clinical datasets for pharma partners. Heavy collaboration with Clinical Ops, AI Engineering, and Data Delivery.
Role Responsibilities
- Transform raw, abstracted, and AI‑processed data into CDISC SDTM/ADaM datasets
- Program statistical outputs (tables, listings, figures) in SAS/R/Python
- Investigate data anomalies across multiple messy data inputs
- Define data dictionaries and standards before study kickoff
- Handle data in a HIPAA‑aligned manner
Key Requirements
- 2-5 years in clinical data science, stat programming, or clinical data management
- Pharma/Biotech experience
- SAS, R, Python, SQL
- Real‑world clinical data or oncology trials
- CDISC SDTM/ADaM

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AI Engineer
San Francisco
$200000 - $250000
+ Data Science & AI
PermanentSan Francisco, California
To Apply for this Job Click Here
Title: AI Engineer
Location: Remote, United States
Compensation: Up to $250,000 + Equity
We’re partnered with a mission-driven healthcare technology company working at the intersection of clinical data and AI. They’re reimagining how complex clinical workflows are automated, with a focus on making high-quality healthcare data more accessible, structured, and actionable. This is a company building something genuinely novel in a space where the stakes are high and the impact is real.
This is a high-impact role where you will lead AI innovation from the ground up. You won’t just be implementing models, you’ll own the full lifecycle of production AI systems, define how clinical data is extracted and structured at scale, and influence the company’s long-term AI direction. The work spans LLMs, computer vision, and mixed-modal approaches in a domain where rigor and accuracy are non-negotiable.
What You’ll Do
- Design, develop, and deploy novel AI/ML systems – with a focus on LLMs and computer vision – to recover, extract, and automate clinical data tasks across diverse data types including medical records, imaging, and clinical reports
- Build robust prototypes and transition them to scalable, near-production-ready code, applying strong software engineering fundamentals throughout
- Design and execute rigorous statistical validation and evaluation frameworks, defining performance metrics and ensuring models meet stakeholder-defined accuracy thresholds
- Own the human-in-the-loop (HITL) lifecycle, ensuring deployed models can continuously improve over time through structured feedback capture
- Partner closely with software engineering to bring proof-of-concept solutions into production, contributing to key architectural decisions along the way
- Proactively identify high-impact AI opportunities across the business and define how advanced capabilities can address them
- Champion best practices for documentation, experimentation, and code quality across the model development lifecycle – and potentially mentor others in doing the same
- Actively evaluate state-of-the-art approaches, bringing innovative ideas and methods to the team
- Apply and uphold healthcare data privacy regulations and ethical standards in all AI development work
Requirements
- MSc or PhD in computer science, engineering, applied mathematics, statistics, or a related field; BSc with equivalent demonstrated experience also considered
- 2-5+ years of relevant experience in AI/ML engineering or data science, with increasing scope and responsibility over time
- Deep hands-on Python expertise; polyglot coder comfortable across modern programming languages
- Significant experience with at least one deep learning framework (PyTorch, TensorFlow, etc.) applied to LLMs or computer vision in production contexts
- Proven knowledge of the healthcare data domain in at least one area: EHR/EMR, clinical imaging, clinical workflows, or clinical research
- Extensive experience with modern cloud compute and storage platforms (AWS, Azure, Databricks, Snowflake, etc.)
- Solid understanding of database technologies (SQL, NoSQL, etc.)
- Strong familiarity with SDLC and agile methodologies
- Ability to independently architect end-to-end solutions and clearly communicate how they deliver business value
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills – including the ability to present complex technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders
Nice to Have
- Experience with computer vision or multimodal model development
- Background in clinical research, regulated healthcare environments, or medical data pipelines
- Familiarity with EDC systems or clinical trial data infrastructure
- Experience designing or improving HITL feedback systems in production
- Exposure to AI evaluation frameworks or quality assessment tooling
If you’re interested in shaping how AI systems are built, evaluated, and deployed in high-trust environments, this is an opportunity to have direct influence on both technical direction and real-world impact at a fast-growing company.

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Principal Data Scientist
San Francisco
$200000 - $230000
+ Data Science & AI
PermanentUSA
To Apply for this Job Click Here
Principal Data Scientist
Remote or Hybrid, United States.
Competitive salary plus bonus and benefits
This is a senior-level opportunity to shape the direction of data science and artificial intelligence within a high-impact, product-focused environment. You will operate as a technical leader, driving complex initiatives from concept through delivery while influencing how advanced analytics and AI capabilities are embedded into end-user experiences.
The Company
They are an established organisation investing heavily in data science and AI to enhance their products and deliver meaningful outcomes at scale. Operating at the intersection of technology, data, and user experience, they bring together cross-functional teams to solve complex problems.
The Role
* Lead the design and delivery of high-impact data science and AI solutions aligned to strategic business objectives
* Provide technical leadership across multiple workstreams, ensuring projects are well-scoped, prioritised, and delivered effectively
* Collaborate with product, engineering, and business stakeholders to define problems and translate them into scalable data solutions
* Develop and implement production-grade machine learning and AI systems, including generative AI capabilities
* Communicate insights, recommendations, and technical concepts clearly to a range of stakeholders
Your Skills & Experience
* Strong expertise in data science, machine learning, or artificial intelligence, demonstrated through academic or industry work
* Proven track record of building and deploying production-scale data and AI systems, including experience with generative AI
* Ability to independently define problems, design solutions, and deliver results end-to-end
* Experience providing technical leadership and guiding cross-functional teams
* Strong communication skills, with the ability to influence both technical and non-technical audiences
What They Offer
* Competitive salary with bonus and comprehensive benefits
* Opportunity to lead strategic AI and data initiatives with real business impact
* Collaborative, cross-functional working environment
* Flexibility through remote or hybrid working
* Clear progression opportunities within a growing data and AI function

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Staff Applied AI Engineer
San Francisco
$200000 - $300000
+ Data Science & AI
PermanentSan Francisco, California
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Staff Applied AI Engineer | Bay Area (Hybrid) | $200k-$298k base + equity
I’m partnering with a high-growth SaaS company at the cutting edge of AI and compliance on a senior Applied AI Engineer hire.
This is not a typical “build a model and ship it” role.
This is where you define what good AI looks like – owning how systems retrieve, reason, and deliver trustworthy outputs at scale.
You’ll sit at the intersection of research and real-world impact, shaping the intelligence behind core product features.
‘ :
* Improving RAG systems – retrieval quality, chunking, embeddings, hybrid search
* Designing evaluation frameworks (metrics, golden datasets, regression detection)
* Building and tuning ranking + reranking systems (cross-encoders, LLM rerankers)
* Running experiments to validate what actually improves performance
* Debugging failure modes across retrieval, reasoning, and generation
* Prototyping agent-style workflows over complex, document-heavy data
* Exploring ML approaches beyond GenAI (ranking, classification, probabilistic models)
‘ :
* 8-10+ years in applied ML, data science, or AI research
* Strong experience in information retrieval / search relevance
* Hands-on with RAG systems and retrieval optimization
* Deep understanding of evaluation + experimentation (A/B testing, metrics)
* Python + strong problem-solving / research mindset
* Someone who can explain why systems work (or don’t) – not just build them
:
* You’ve only used LLM APIs without optimizing retrieval or evaluation
* Your experience is purely prompt engineering
* You prefer purely academic research without product impact
* You’re looking for a heavily structured, slow-moving environment
Candidates must be based in the Bay Area and open to a hybrid setup.
If you’re interested in making AI systems measurably better – not just building them, drop me a message or comment below.
Happy to share more details confidentially.
#AIJobs #MachineLearning #RAG #SearchRelevance #LLMs #Hiring #BayAreaJobs #TechJobs

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Senior Machine Learning Engineer
Irvine
$180000 - $220000
+ Data Science & AI
PermanentIrvine, California
To Apply for this Job Click Here
What You’ll Do
- Evaluate existing machine learning models and identify performance improvement opportunities
- Train, test, deploy, and continuously refine production ML models
- Improve feature engineering, model architectures, prediction accuracy, and optimization performance
- Analyze large-scale datasets containing millions of records across multiple sources
- Design and execute experiments to validate model improvements
- Develop production-quality Python code and collaborate through code reviews and testing practices
- Translate insights from complex datasets into measurable product and business outcomes
- Monitor model effectiveness and evolve solutions as user behavior and market conditions change
- Partner with Product, Engineering, and Data teams to align machine learning initiatives with business objectives
What Success Looks Like
During the first several months, you will:
- Gain a deep understanding of existing machine learning systems and business objectives
- Analyze large and complex datasets to uncover optimization opportunities
- Improve prediction, ranking, recommendation, or optimization models
- Introduce enhanced features, architectures, and model configurations
- Deliver production-ready improvements that positively impact key performance metrics and revenue
Ideal Background
Successful candidates may come from backgrounds such as:
- Senior Machine Learning Engineer
- Applied Machine Learning Engineer
- Data Scientist with strong production ML experience
- Software Engineer specializing in Machine Learning
Experience in any of the following areas is highly valued:
- Advertising technology and optimization
- Ranking and bidding systems
- Recommendation engines
- Personalization systems
- Search and relevance algorithms
- Marketplace optimization
- User value prediction
- Large-scale forecasting and predictive systems
Candidates from consumer technology, marketplaces, digital products, or other large-scale data environments are encouraged to apply.
Required Qualifications
- 5+ years of industry experience in Machine Learning Engineering, Applied Machine Learning, or Data Science
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, Statistics, or a related technical field
- Strong Python programming skills with hands-on experience building ML solutions
- Advanced SQL skills, including complex joins, aggregations, and multi-source analysis
- Experience working with datasets containing millions of records
- Experience building, deploying, and optimizing production machine learning models
- Strong understanding of feature engineering and its impact on model performance
- Experience writing maintainable, testable, production-quality code
- Ability to operate independently and drive technical decisions
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience with optimization, ranking, recommendation, or personalization systems
- Background in advertising technology or digital monetization platforms
- Familiarity with feature stores and modern machine learning workflows
- Experience with cloud platforms and modern data technologies
- Knowledge of large-scale experimentation frameworks and model evaluation methodologies

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