Staff Software Engineer AI Opportunity @ FourKites

About the Role

We are seeking an experienced Staff AI Engineer to join our AI and Data Platform team, where you'll play a pivotal role in building and scaling our next-generation AI workforce platform. You'll work on cutting-edge agent-based systems that are transforming supply chain operations for Fortune 500 companies, delivering real business value through intelligent automation.

Key Responsibilities

Technical Leadership

• Design and implement production-scale AI agent systems and orchestration frameworks (LangGraph, LangChain, similar architectures)
• Lead architecture for multi-agent systems handling complex business workflows
• Optimize deployment strategies using both LLMs and SLMs based on use case requirements
• Build natural language-configurable business process automation frameworks
• Implement multi-modal AI systems for document understanding (tables, charts, layouts)

AI/ML Implementation & Optimization

• Deploy and optimize LLMs/SLMs in production with fine-tuning techniques (LoRA, QLoRA, DPO)
• Implement quantization strategies (INT8, INT4) and model distillation for edge deployment
• Build evaluation frameworks including LLM-as-judge systems and regression testing
• Design streaming architectures for real-time LLM responses (SSE, WebSockets)
• Create semantic caching and embedding-based retrieval systems
• Develop GraphRAG and long-context handling strategies (100k+ tokens)

System Architecture & Engineering

• Design scalable microservices with comprehensive observability (LangSmith, Arize, custom telemetry)
• Build secure multi-tenant systems with prompt injection prevention and output validation
• Implement cost optimization through intelligent model routing and fallback strategies
• Develop document processing pipelines with OCR and layout understanding
• Create event-driven architectures for real-time shipment tracking and exception handling

Data & Infrastructure

• Build data pipelines for training data curation, synthetic generation, and PII masking
• Implement RLHF/RLAIF feedback loops for continuous improvement
• Design experiment tracking and model registry systems (MLflow, DVC)
• Optimize inference costs through batch processing and spot instance utilization
• Establish model governance, audit trails, and compliance frameworks

Required Qualifications

Technical Skills

• 8+ years software engineering, 3+ years in production AI/ML systems
• Expertise in Python, PyTorch/JAX, and AI frameworks (LangChain, Transformers, PEFT)
• Experience with LLMs (GPT-4, Claude, Gemini) and SLMs (Phi, Llama, Mistral)
• Hands-on experience with:
• Fine-tuning techniques (LoRA, QLoRA, DPO, RLHF)
• Model optimization (quantization, distillation, pruning)
• Vector databases and RAG architectures
• Streaming systems and real-time processing
• Security measures (prompt injection prevention, jailbreak detection)
• Strong background in distributed systems, Kubernetes, and cloud platforms

Domain Knowledge(nice to have)

• Experience with document intelligence and multi-modal AI systems
• Understanding of supply chain operations, EDI/API integrations
• Knowledge of token economics and consumption-based pricing models
• Familiarity with enterprise compliance requirements (GDPR, CCPA, SOC2)

Professional Skills

• Track record of delivering complex projects with measurable business impact
• Experience with technical sales support, POCs, and customer success
• Strong communication for technical and non-technical audiences
• Data-driven decision making for model selection and cost optimization

Preferred Qualifications

• Supply chain, logistics, or transportation management experience
• Experience with OCR pipelines and document extraction at scale
• Knowledge of GraphRAG and knowledge graph integration
• Contributions to open-source AI projects (Hugging Face, Ollama)
• Experience reducing inference costs by 50%+ through optimization
• Familiarity with MoE architectures and constitutional AI approaches
• Background in building usage-based billing and margin optimization
• Experience with specialized tools (vLLM, TGI, Triton, ONNX, TensorRT)

What You'll Work On

• Building specialized AI agents solving supply chain problems
• Fine-tuning domain-specific models for supply chain terminology
• Implementing hybrid architectures combining cloud LLMs with edge SLMs
• Creating secure document intelligence systems for Fortune 500 clients
• Developing real-time exception handling for shipment tracking
• Building observability and evaluation frameworks for agent performance
• Designing fallback strategies and multi-provider redundancy

Technical Environment

Models

Impact & Growth

You'll directly contribute to AI initiatives generating millions in revenue while shaping systems processing millions of transactions daily. Lead technical decisions affecting 25+ engineers while mentoring the next generation of AI engineers. Be at the forefront of production AI optimization, balancing performance, cost, and latency for enterprise customers.