Principal AI Engineer

Overview

Los Angeles "Near UCLA" | Hybrid (Minimum 4 days in office) | Full Time |

At Kizen, we’re engineering a more humane future where AI drives universal healthcare, more impactful work, world-class education, exceptional customer experiences, and — overall — a more fulfilling human experience.

Kizen is on a mission to give every team member an AI Assistant - turning every company into an AI-company, every worker into an AI-Enhanced Worker, and every Process into an AI-optimized, continuously improving process. Kizen is the first GenAI enterprise application builder. Businesses of any size, within any industry can build AI assistants for complex jobs across healthcare, finance, and HR and modern enterprise applications - like CRMs, Workflow Automation, Real Time Dashboards, and Secure Portals in minutes and perfect them in an afternoon.

Kizen helps teams systematically improve processes and business outcomes with data-driven insights and powerful automation with access to all the latest AI models.

Shape the Future of AI at Kizen

Are you ready to push the boundaries of what's possible with AI and backend systems? At Kizen, we're engineering intelligent systems that combine cutting-edge AI with robust backend architecture to revolutionize healthcare, redefine work-life balance, transform education, and elevate customer experiences. Our mission is to create technology that doesn't just work – it transforms how businesses operate.

As we rapidly expand, we're seeking exceptional engineers who excel in both AI development and backend systems. This is your opportunity to be part of something transformative – to architect and build systems that set new benchmarks for what technology can achieve across industries.

At Kizen, you'll join a brilliant, fun team tackling challenges that matter. We offer:

• The opportunity to work on groundbreaking AI technologies with real-world impact
• A startup culture that values innovation, ownership, and rapid iteration
• Regular opportunities to present your technical solutions to company leadership
• A supportive environment for professional growth and learning

We're looking for a Principal AI Engineer to provide strategic feedback and direction for our engineering team as we bring our next-generation platform to the world. In this position, you'll architect, plan, and build sophisticated AI systems with collaborators seamlessly integrating with our backend infrastructure, focusing on generative AI, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and multi-agent architectures.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the design and implementation of production-ready RAG systems that integrate seamlessly with our backend infrastructure using Django, Kafka, Postgre
  
  SQL, and Clickhouse
• Architect multi-agent AI systems that operate effectively within our platform's constraints and understand business value implications.
• Drive product strategy by providing accurate work estimations and technical roadmaps with minimal supervision.
• Design and implement sophisticated vector search solutions, including graph-based RAG systems
• Architect and build highly scalable LLM-powered systems that can handle enterprise-level workloads
• Lead LLM fine-tuning initiatives to customize models for specific business domains and use cases
• Design and implement user feedback systems to collect, analyze, and incorporate insights for continuous improvement
• Optimize LLM performance, cost, and reliability in production environments
• Establish MLOps best practices using platforms like Langfuse or LiteLLM to ensure robust model monitoring and evaluation
• Mentor and develop junior engineers in AI/ML best practices
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to translate business requirements into technical solutions
• Lead system architecture decisions and technical direction for AI initiatives
• Evaluate emerging AI technologies for potential adoption

Education and Experience

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field
• 8+ years of backend engineering experience with Django, Kafka, and PostgreSQL
• 4+ years of hands-on experience building and deploying machine…