Applied AI Engineer

Zania, Inc

• $130K — $160K *
Enterprise Technology
Less than 5 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 3+ years in applied AI or machine learning engineering role.
  • Experience shipping reliable, production-scale ML products.
  • Hands-on experience with LLMs including fine-tuning, RAG, and agentic systems.
  • Demonstrated ownership and a proactive approach toward achieving high accuracy.
  • Strong communication skills for collaboration with technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Responsibilities

  • Build and fine-tune AI models on proprietary data.
  • Develop multi-step agentic workflows to automate GRC processes.
  • Implement AI explainability and safety methods.
  • Rapidly prototype and integrate state-of-the-art AI research into production.

Benefits

  • Flexible PTO
  • Medical, dental, and vision insurance
  • Meals and snacks in the office
  • Relocation and immigration support
Full Job Description
The role

You will build AI systems designed to outperform the world's leading experts in Governance, Risk, and Compliance. Not research. Not prototypes. Production systems with a fanatical focus on accuracy, explainability, and responsible design. You will own the AI-native products that set a new global standard for GRC.

We use an in-person work model and offer relocation assistance.

What you'll do
  • Build & fine-tune models. Fine-tune foundation models on proprietary data and implement novel techniques to achieve world-class accuracy on complex GRC tasks.
  • Develop AI-native workflows. Build sophisticated, multi-step agentic workflows that automate complex GRC processes - from risk assessment to compliance monitoring to evidence collection.
  • Champion responsible AI. Implement and pioneer methods for AI explainability and safety. Our systems must be transparent, auditable, and fair. This is non-negotiable in our domain.
  • Drive innovation. Rapidly prototype, evaluate, and integrate state-of-the-art research (agents, RAG, new architectures) into reliable, production-grade features.

Representative projects
  • Build an AI agent that analyzes thousands of regulatory documents and internal controls, identifying compliance gaps with higher accuracy than a team of human experts.
  • Develop an explainable AI system for risk assessment, allowing auditors and executives to understand and trust the AI's reasoning on high-stakes decisions.
  • Build an advanced RAG pipeline over a massive corpus of unstructured company data to produce precise, verifiable assessments against complex compliance requirements.
  • Partner with GRC subject matter experts to create ground-truth datasets for tasks like third-party risk evaluation, then fine-tune models that become the industry standard.

What you have
  • 3+ years in an applied AI or machine learning engineering role.
  • Proven product sense. You've shipped reliable, production-scale ML products. You know how to use offline evaluation and online experimentation to achieve high-performance results.
  • Hands-on applied AI expertise. Direct experience building with LLMs - fine-tuning, RAG, and agentic systems. Not theoretical. You've put these into production.
  • High agency. You take full ownership of outcomes, move with a bias for action, and have a relentless drive for world-class accuracy. You see constraints as design problems, not blockers.
  • Strong communication. You can work closely with security and GRC research counterparts and articulate technical tradeoffs clearly.

Minimum Qualifications
  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience
  • 3+ years of experience in applied AI, machine learning engineering, or a related technical role
  • Demonstrated hands-on experience building and deploying LLM-based systems (fine-tuning, RAG, or agentic workflows) in a production environment
  • Strong written and verbal communication skills - you will collaborate closely with GRC subject matter experts and must translate technical tradeoffs clearly to non-technical stakeholders

Compensation & benefits
  • Competitive salary + significant equity
  • Flexible PTO
  • Medical, dental, and vision insurance
  • Meals and snacks in the office
  • Relocation and immigration support

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