Software Engineer, AI Engineer (Applied​/Software), Backend Developer

Backend-focused engineer building scalable APIs and data pipelines that power AI-driven features (LLMs, embeddings, RAG).

Charlotte, NC (hybrid — onsite 3 days/week) $92,000 – $115,000

carbon house is looking for a Software Engineer with a strong interest in applied AI to help build intelligent, scalable systems. This role focuses on integrating AI capabilities into production software — bridging traditional engineering with modern machine learning and LLM workflows.

You'll work on backend services, APIs and data pipelines that power AI-driven features, collaborating closely with product and design to bring those capabilities to life.

The role

• Design, build and maintain scalable backend systems and APIs
• Integrate AI/ML capabilities into applications — LLMs, embeddings, classification and more
• Develop and optimize data pipelines for AI workflows
• Implement retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and context-aware systems
• Evaluate and integrate third-party AI tools and services
• Improve system performance, reliability and cost efficiency
• Write clean, maintainable, well-tested code and collaborate cross-functionally to ship AI-powered features
• Contribute to architecture decisions and technical direction

• Experience building and maintaining backend systems and APIs
• Familiarity with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP or Azure)
• Experience with databases (SQL and/or No
  
  SQL)
• Understanding of software design principles and system architecture
• Familiarity with integrating AI APIs (OpenAI, Anthropic) — prompt engineering, embeddings and vector search, model limitations and evaluation

• Experience building AI-powered applications in production
• Familiarity with vector databases (Pinecone, Weaviate) and frameworks like Lang Chain or Llama Index
• Knowledge of ML fundamentals (training, fine-tuning, evaluation)
• Experience with Docker/Kubernetes, event-driven or streaming architectures
• Frontend experience (React, Next.js) is a plus but not required

Hybrid role — onsite three days per week at our Charlotte, NC office.

Work visa sponsorship is not offered for this position.

carbon house is an equal opportunity employer.