This role suits an experienced engineer who thrives on architectural decisions, wants to own systems end-to-end, and can drive technical leadership across a team. The position is a Staff AI Builder role based in CA Remote at Robots and Pencils.
Role Overview
Robots and Pencils is seeking a Staff AI Builder to lead the design and delivery of artificial intelligence and machine learning systems. Working as a key technical leader on a cross-functional team, the professional in this position will define AI architecture, lead model development and optimization, and resolve complex integration problems. The role focuses on shipping production-ready artificial intelligence solutions in environments where reliability, security, and scalability are critical.
Key Responsibilities
Design and construct agentic workflows involving reasoning loops, tool and function calling, and orchestration across single- and multi-agent architectures
Build and maintain Retrieval-Augmented Generation pipelines encompassing chunking strategies, embeddings, vector search utilizing OpenSearch, re-ranking, and freshness management
Integrate systems with AWS Bedrock and Agent Core, including Model Context Protocol tool design and precise tool description writing
Write and refine production system prompts with structured role framing, output constraints, and few-shot designs
Incorporate evaluation and observability into shipped agents through golden datasets, RAGAS-style metrics, LLM-as-judge guardrails, and tracing via LangFuse or LangSmith
Engineer systems to account for large language model failures by implementing retries with backoff and jitter, circuit breakers, and fallback models
Construct backend services using Python and Node.js alongside serverless architectures like AWS Lambda and API Gateway
Design DynamoDB single-table schemas featuring composite keys and transactional writes for session history and agent memory
Support event-driven orchestration utilizing Step Functions, SQS, and EventBridge for asynchronous agent operations
Partner with product, design, and delivery leads across global teams to scope and ship features end-to-end
Mentor fellow engineers on the pod and establish engineering standards for agentic engineering practices
Requirements
Six or more years of professional software engineering experience with meaningful time spent shipping generative artificial intelligence and large language model systems to production
Hands-on depth in agentic artificial intelligence including reasoning loops, function calling, and multi-agent orchestration
Practical expertise in Retrieval-Augmented Generation covering chunking, embeddings, vector databases like OpenSearch, similarity search, and re-ranking
Experience building evaluation and observability for large language model systems using golden datasets, LLM-as-judge, RAGAS metrics, and tracing tools
Strong prompt engineering abilities to write structured production system prompts with request constraints
Hands-on experience with the AWS generative artificial intelligence stack including Bedrock, Agent Core, Lambda, DynamoDB single-table design, S3, SQS, EventBridge, and Step Functions
Proficiency in Python and Node.js for building full-stack applications and RESTful APIs
Understanding of production reliability patterns for large language model-backed systems
Experience with containerization using Docker and cloud-native deployments
Nice to Have
Direct experience with Amazon Bedrock Agent Core covering agent registration, tool wiring, and memory management
Experience working in regulated or high-stakes domains such as education, healthcare, or financial services
Familiarity with workflow orchestration tools like Step Functions or state-machine-based systems
Direct operational point of view on large language model observability tooling
Skills and Tools
Python
Node.js
AWS Bedrock
AWS Agent Core
AWS Lambda
Amazon DynamoDB
Amazon OpenSearch
AWS S3
AWS SQS
AWS EventBridge
AWS Step Functions
Docker
LangFuse
LangSmith
RESTful APIs
Salary and Benefits
The salary range is $176,612 to $243,680 CAD
About the Company
Robots and Pencils designs artificial intelligence systems for a human world, pairing engineering with creativity so that shipped agents function for real people within real workflows. The organization focuses on enterprise operations integration, velocity, and delivering measurable client impact with production-ready timelines of 30 to 45 days.
How to Apply
Apply on the official company careers page.
