Software Engineer – Backend Applied ML – Safety & Integrity
| Company | Character.AI |
|---|---|
| Location | Palo Alto, CA, USA, San Francisco, CA, USA |
| Salary | $150000 – $300000 |
| Type | Full-Time |
| Degrees | Bachelor’s, Master’s, PhD |
| Experience Level | Senior, Expert or higher |
Requirements
- 8+ years of professional software engineering experience, with a strong emphasis on backend systems development.
- Bachelor’s, Master’s, or PhD degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field.
- Proven track record of designing, building, and operating complex, large-scale, and highly available distributed systems.
- Expertise in one or more backend programming languages such as Python, Go, Java, or C++.
- Hands-on experience in applying machine learning techniques to solve real-world problems, specifically with demonstrable experience in addressing integrity, trust, or safety challenges.
- Solid understanding of the machine learning lifecycle, including data gathering and cleaning, feature engineering, model selection, training, validation, A/B testing, deployment, and operational monitoring.
- Exceptional problem-solving abilities, with a knack for tackling ambiguous and technically challenging problems.
- Proven ability to work in a fast-paced development environment and deliver timely results.
- Strong communication, interpersonal, and leadership skills, with the ability to articulate complex technical concepts to diverse audiences.
Responsibilities
- Design, develop, and maintain highly scalable, resilient, and performant backend systems that power our integrity and safety features.
- Lead the technical design and implementation of sophisticated backend solutions for detecting, preventing, and mitigating a wide array of integrity risks.
- Conceptualize, develop, deploy, and iterate on machine learning models and algorithms to address complex integrity challenges.
- Work closely with product managers, data scientists, AI researchers, security teams, and operations to define requirements, design innovative solutions, and deliver impactful integrity systems.
- Drive the long-term technical vision and roadmap for backend integrity systems and applied ML capabilities.
- Provide technical guidance and mentorship to other engineers on the team and across the organization.
- Advocate for and implement best practices in software engineering, distributed systems design, data engineering, and the full lifecycle of ML model development.
- Continuously analyze and improve the performance, scalability, reliability, and cost-effectiveness of existing integrity platforms and ML models.
- Keep abreast of emerging threats, new technologies, and advancements in backend engineering, distributed systems, the application of machine learning to trust and safety, and the evolving landscape of Generative AI safety research and mitigation techniques.
Preferred Qualifications
- You care deeply about Trust & Safety and see it as a value-add to the business.
- Prior experience in a dedicated Trust & Safety, Integrity, or Risk engineering team.
- Contributions to open-source projects or publications in relevant fields.
- Experience leading large, cross-cutting technical projects.