Applied AI​/ML Engineer

San Francisco, New York, Kansas City, or Remote (US)

Replica provides data about the built environment and ways people interact with it. With better data, human-context and an intuitive design, Replica helps public and private sectors make informed, effective, and responsive decisions. By showing how people live, move and work, we contextualize hard choices, allowing our clients to see around corners and understand the trade-offs surrounding their decisions. Whether for a city planner increasing public transit to underserved neighborhoods or for a grocery chain evaluating where to open a new location, Replica’s insights lets clients make more informed, people-centered decisions.

We spun out of Alphabet in 2019 and recently secured series B funding from venture firms including Founders Fund, Innovation Endeavors, Sidewalk Labs, Firebrand Ventures, and Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund. Today, we are a team of 34 employees with offices in San Francisco, New York, Kansas City and Remote.

We value our customers, believe in being resourceful, and work in service of each other to scale our product. As we build our team, we are committed to pursuing and bringing together a diverse workforce and creating an environment of inclusion. We value our differences and we encourage all to apply. We are committed to equal opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, gender, gender identity, parental or pregnancy status, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, Veteran status, or any other status protected by the laws or regulations in the locations where we operate.

We’re looking for an Applied AI/ML Engineer to help design, implement, and scale advanced models that power Replica’s urban simulation and analytics products. This role is scoped at the Senior level or above: we expect candidates to operate at least at a Senior Engineer level, and for exceptional candidates, we are open to Staff or Principal-level.

You’ll sit at the intersection of research and engineering, translating applied methods into production-ready models that deliver meaningful insights about mobility, land use, and activity patterns across the US. Unlike our infrastructure-oriented teams, your work will focus on algorithms, modeling, and applied AI/ML techniques that improve Replica’s products and unlock new capabilities for customers.

• Reports to:
  
  Director of Engineering
• Works closely with:
  Product and Data Science teams and other engineers on the Data Production team
• Collaborates with:
  Customer Success and Strategy teams to ensure models align with product needs and customer use cases

• Design, prototype, and implement applied AI/ML models for mobility, activity, and behavioral modeling at scale
  
  Drive improvements to core models for routing, mode choice, demand estimation, and geospatial forecasting — balancing research innovation with production readiness
• Partner closely with Product and Data Science leadership to set technical direction for modeling initiatives, ensuring they align with customer and business needs
• Evaluate new data sources (e.g., vendor-provided mobility data, traffic sensors, geospatial layers) for quality, coverage, and fitness-for-use in Replica’s models
• Develop new algorithms to fuse Replica’s proprietary data with external sources (e.g., traffic sensors, land use, census, streaming data)
• Evaluate model performance, define success metrics, and iterate quickly to improve accuracy, robustness, and fairness
• Collaborate with data production engineers to transition prototypes into robust, production-quality systems used nationwide
• Contribute to modeling frameworks and shared libraries, mentoring peers and raising…