Associate AI Engineer

Figure Lending is seeking an Associate AI Engineer to support the operation and continuous improvement of production conversational AI systems. The position combines hands-on reliability work for chat and voice services with building Python-based services, APIs, data and evaluation pipelines, and internal tools, with growth toward broader full-stack production AI engineering over time.

Location, schedule, and role focus

• Location: Los Angeles, CA (onsite)
• Time split (initial): about half technical operations for AI-powered chat, voice, and customer-support services, and about half hands-on work across the broader AI stack

Compensation

• Base range: USD 80,000 - 120,000 per year
• Bonus: 25% annual bonus target, paid quarterly
• Equity: Company equity in the form of RSUs
• Note: This range applies to the United States; actual compensation may vary based on experience, skills, location, internal equity, and evolving business needs

What you will do

• Improve AI-powered chat and voice services that support customer-service and lending workflows
• Build and maintain agent workflows and API-integrated tools, including guardrails, retrieval rules, and escalation paths
• Review workflows for logic errors, unsafe behavior, routing conflicts, and unnecessary model context
• Apply disciplined development and release practices, including staging, testing, review, and production release discipline
• Partner with domain experts who own customer experience, policies, and lending operations
• Translate business knowledge into reliable system behavior without becoming the sole owner of that knowledge
• Decide whether issues are best handled via workflow logic, deterministic code, retrieval, an LLM, or a product change
• Create automated tests and simulations for conversational workflows
• Define and track metrics for containment, escalation, answer quality, task completion, and customer impact
• Develop tagging, monitoring, and quality-assurance systems for production conversations
• Analyze failures and convert production evidence into prioritized improvements
• Build pipelines that make conversational data available to analytics and reporting systems
• Design controlled experiments and incremental rollouts to measure business outcomes
• Develop Python services and APIs that expose AI capabilities and integrate AI systems with Figure’s internal services
• Build data and evaluation pipelines using Python and SQL
• Contribute to internal tools and user interfaces
• Learn Figure’s deployment, monitoring, containerization, and CI/CD practices and gradually own increasing production engineering scope
• Inventory and review conversational tools that access internal or third-party APIs
• Ensure sensitive operations use deterministic validation instead of relying on unreliable model judgment
• Support appropriate handling of customer data, credentials, PII, and regulated workflows
• Maintain auditability for workflow changes and production behavior
• Escalate security, compliance, and reliability concerns using sound technical reasoning

Required background

• Strong programming fundamentals and practical Python experience
• Working knowledge of SQL and structured data analysis
• Ability to break ambiguous problems into testable components
• Comfort reading unfamiliar code and tracing system behavior
• Strong written communication and attention to detail
• Interest in AI behavior, analytics, backend systems, and product workflows
• A habit of validating assumptions and measuring outcomes
• Ability to collaborate with engineers and nontechnical domain experts
• Desire to grow into a full-stack production AI engineer
• Experience building an API, backend service, automation, data pipeline, or internal tool
• Experience evaluating LLMs, conversational agents, or other probabilistic systems
• Knowledge of experimental design, statistics, causal inference, or applied econometrics
• Experience testing nondeterministic systems
• Familiarity with retrieval-augmented generation, agent tools, workflow engines, or model evaluation
• Ability to distinguish problems requiring deterministic logic from those suited to an LLM
• Experience translating domain or policy requirements into software behavior

Technologies

• Python, SQL, TypeScript
• Docker
• CI/CD and infrastructure as code
• LLMs, retrieval-augmented generation
• Workflow engines and model evaluation

Benefits

• Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage, with 100% employer-paid premiums for employees and their dependents on select plans
• Company HSA, FSA, Dependent Care FSA, 401(k), and commuter benefits
• Employer-paid life and disability insurance
• 11 observed holidays and a PTO plan
• Up to 12 weeks of paid family leave
• Continuing education reimbursement

Work authorization

• Figure will not sponsor work visas for this position
• All persons hired must verify identity and eligibility to work in the United States and complete the required employment eligibility verification form upon hire

Additional notes on application data

• Certain laws may regulate how Figure manages applicant data depending on your residential location
• California Residents should review Figure’s California Employee and General Workforce Privacy Notice
• By submitting your application, you agree and acknowledge that you have read and understand the notice