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Founding Senior Applied AI Engineer

goalyPalo Alto, CA, USAEngineering
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Salary
Not listed
Job type
Full-time
Experience
Senior · 5+ yrs
Posted
24 Sept 2026
Status
Open · checked 7d ago

About this role

Founding Senior Applied AI Engineer is a full-time, hybrid position based in Palo Alto, California, at a stealth AI startup called goaly. This role suits experienced software engineers who want to build foundational AI systems and agent harnesses with high autonomy from day one.

Role Overview

Founding Senior Applied AI Engineer is an early-stage role at goaly in Palo Alto, CA. The team is building the layer between frontier models and real users, focusing on agent harnesses, sandboxes, and evaluation stacks. The position requires working closely with customers to transition prototypes into reliable production systems while collaborating with research teams to improve model development.

Key Responsibilities

Build and manage the agent harness, encompassing loops, tool interfaces, system prompts, stop conditions, retries, and budget controls.
Develop isolated, reproducible, and fast sandboxed execution environments using containers or microVMs for serving, reinforcement learning, and evaluations.
Design context engineering strategies for window management, compaction, file-backed memory, state persistence, and retrieval.
Ensure complete observability and replayability for every agent run by tracing model calls, tool executions, and state changes.
Construct evaluation stacks including offline suites, production trace tests, and LLM-as-judge mechanisms.
Collaborate directly with real users to take workflows from early prototypes to stable production systems.
Convert production data and failure modes into actionable tasks and reward signals for post-training research.
Manage model selection and balance trade-offs related to cost, latency, and output quality.

Requirements

Minimum of 5 years of experience building production software, running large-scale systems, and managing on-call duties.
Proven track record of building, shipping, and debugging agentic systems with tool use relied upon by real users.
Direct familiarity with production failure modes such as context overflow, looping agents, prompt injection, and cost spikes.
Proficiency in Python along with at least one additional language including TypeScript, Go, or Rust.
Practical comfort with Docker, Linux, and cloud infrastructure.
Habit of designing custom evaluations rather than relying solely on public benchmarks.

Nice to Have

Experience developing agent platforms, workflow systems, model-serving products, machine learning infrastructure, or developer-facing AI tooling.
Background in multi-tenant control planes, IAM, billing systems, enterprise security, or high-throughput APIs.
Familiarity with LLM inference, fine-tuning, evaluation, sandboxes, and the operational lifecycle of production agents.
Experience owning open-source SDKs, developer documentation, or community integrations.
Full-stack capabilities with an understanding of interaction design for backend-adjacent product challenges.

Skills and Tools

Python
TypeScript
Go
Rust
Docker
Linux
Cloud Infrastructure
MCP servers

Salary and Benefits

Hybrid work setup in Palo Alto with 4 or more days per week in the office.
Visa sponsorship including H-1B and OPT/CPT support with immigration counsel.
Complimentary lunch, dinner, snacks, and drinks provided on-site.

About the Company

Goaly is a stealth artificial intelligence startup founded by former Meta Superintelligence Labs engineers and researchers. The organization is backed by leading AI investors and endorsed by frontier AI researchers, with a mission to lower the cost, time, and talent barriers required to build proprietary artificial intelligence systems.

How to Apply

Interested candidates should apply directly on the official company careers page.

Skills and tech stack

PythonTypeScriptGoRustDockerLinuxLLMFine-tuning

Questions candidates ask

Where is the Founding Senior Applied AI Engineer position located?

The role is based in Palo Alto, CA, requiring a hybrid schedule with 4 or more days per week in the office.

Is visa sponsorship available for this role?

Yes, visa sponsorship is available including H-1B and OPT/CPT support with immigration counsel.

How many years of experience are required?

The position requires 5 or more years of experience building production software and running systems at scale.

What programming languages are required?

Strong Python skills are required, plus proficiency in at least one of TypeScript, Go, or Rust.

What perks are provided with the job?

Complimentary lunch, dinner, snacks, and drinks are provided on-site.

Ready to apply?

The application is on the official goaly careers page.

Apply on company site