Associate AI Engineer

Fuel Cycle is building and deploying production AI agents, and they are hiring an early-career Associate AI Engineer to help bring agent capabilities into real-world services. The role is fully in-office in Los Angeles, CA
, with a mentorship model designed for pair programming, in-person code review, and hands‑on guidance.

In this position, you will work across agent workflows and application engineering, using Python and FastAPI to ship features while building agent components on AWS. You will also contribute to retrieval‑augmented generation (RAG) pipelines and integrate Model Context Protocol (MCP) tools so agents can use the right capabilities at the right time.

• Design, build, and improve AI agents, including structuring tool‑calling loops, model configuration, and multi‑step workflows using Strands Agents and AWS Bedrock
• Build and integrate MCP tools and servers, learning how tool names and descriptions influence LLM behavior
• Deploy and run agents on Bedrock Agent Core
  , collaborating with the platform team and a mentor
• Build RAG pipelines over pgvector or FAISS
  , selecting chunking, embedding, and retrieval approaches based on observed results
• Design, test, and iterate on prompts, evaluating answer quality, latency, and token cost, and learning how production guardrails are applied
• Evaluate models, tools, and approaches and recommend selections with documented reasoning
• Ship FastAPI services with REST and Web Socket APIs backed by PostgreSQL and Redis
  , including designing, implementing, and testing features
• Contribute to background jobs and queue consumers so agent work runs outside the API request path
• Apply architectural standards, use judgment on design choices within those standards, keep design documents current, and flag where standards should change
• Submit pull requests, respond to review feedback, and review teammates’ code as you grow

• Solid Python from coursework, internships, or work, including functions, classes, type hints, error handling, and testing fundamentals
• Data structures and algorithms
  , with awareness of time and space complexity
• SQL fundamentals (joins, aggregations, indexes, schema design), with PostgreSQL exposure preferred
• REST and HTTP concepts, including how a web API is structured
• Git and pull‑request workflow
• Clear communication, comfort asking questions, and a habit of learning new tools while seeking help when stuck

Python, FastAPI, AWS Bedrock, Agent Core, Strands Agents, MCP, pgvector, FAISS, PostgreSQL, Redis, REST APIs, Web Socket APIs, S3, SQS, Lang Chain, OpenAI SDK, Flask, Django, SQL Alchemy, async Python

• Bachelor’s or Master’s in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent practical experience (bootcamp, self‑taught, or on‑the‑job)
• Roughly 0–2 years of software engineering experience, with internships, research, and substantial projects counting
• A track record of learning quickly through coursework, projects, work, open‑source contributions, or community involvement

• An agent project built with Strands Agents
  , Lang Chain
  , OpenAI SDK
  , or similar frameworks, including how an LLM chooses and calls tools
• Experience building or using Model Context Protocol (MCP) tools and servers
• AWS Bedrock or Bedrock Agent Core
  , or AWS basics such as S3 and SQS
• RAG knowledge, including chunking, embeddings, and vector stores
• Prompt engineering experience writing, testing, and iterating prompts
• FastAPI or similar frameworks such as Flask or Django
  , familiarity with SQL Alchemy or another ORM, and willingness to learn async Python

• Expected starting salary range: $90,000 - $110,000
• Final base salary is determined based on location, work experience, skills, knowledge, education, and certifications
• Eligible for…