AI Engineer

Department: Engineering

Location: San Francisco - Presidio

Compensation: $175K – $275K • Offers Equity

Employment Type: FullTime

AI Engineer

Location: San Francisco

About Pathwork

Pathwork is redesigning life & health insurance jobs for the AI age. We believe the 2.5M professionals in the $1T life and health insurance industry don’t need better tools; they need a new operating system.

We’ve already proven it:

• 100+ top brokerages and national carriers use Pathwork

• Active pilots with multiple top-10 insurance companies

• 150%+ QoQ growth, every quarter since launch

Built from day one as AI-native, Pathwork uses agentic orchestration, structured data pipelines, predictive models, and generative AI to transform insurance distribution—bringing speed, structure, and intelligence to outdated workflows.

Why Join Us

• Category-defining product already in use by national brokerages and insurers

• $3.75M in funding from top VCs

• Deep founder experience: Work closely with experienced founders who’ve built and scaled companies from zero to IPO in insurance and AI

• Scenic, focused, intentional: Work from the Presidio in SF or our Domino Park office in Brooklyn—spaces built for walking meetings, deep work, and ambitious thinking.

• Early team, deep ownership, real impact: You’ll shape the systems, the stack, and the trajectory of the product.

• High-trust & Long-term oriented: Grow with a team that values trust, authenticity, learning, and lasting impact. Your contributions will help shape our product, culture, and the long-term legacy of the company.

Our Stack

Python · TypeScript · Node.js · FastAPI · Postgres · Qdrant · LangGraph · Whisper · AWS (Lambda, EC2, ECS, S3) · Terraform · React · Next.js

About the Role

We’re hiring an AI engineer, a full-stack, strategic builder who can take a large project from a working prototype to an industry-defining product. You’ll lead development of our agentic AI systems, owning model orchestration, retrieval, real-time inference, evaluation, and production infrastructure, and collaborating closely with the founding team on product and technical strategy.

What You’ll Own

• Build the engine: Design and own end-to-end agentic systems—retrieval, orchestration, inference, eval, and feedback loops

• Scale the stack: Shape our architecture across model interfaces, data pipelines, vector DBs, and streaming infrastructure

• Ship fast: Partner with product and design to prototype, test, and launch AI-driven features that deliver real value

• Improve performance: Continuously optimize accuracy, latency, and robustness through fine-tuning, eval frameworks, and data iteration

• Learn from the field: Join sales and customer calls to understand real-world pain points, pressure-test features, and translate feedback into product improvements

• Support growth: Build infrastructure and tools that help the whole company move faster—debugging, observability, agent testing

• Build your team: Hire, mentor, and collaborate with engineers who care about craft, velocity, and real-world impact

You Might Be a Fit If You...

• Have 5–10 years of experience building AI or ML-powered systems, ideally in high-growth or early-stage environments

• Have shipped real products that use LLMs, retrieval, orchestration, or streaming inference—not just prototypes

• Think full-stack, end-to-end: You’re comfortable moving between modeling, infra, and product-facing code

• Have an entrepreneurial mindset and thrive on building from scratch—systems, processes, tools, and the team

• Can explain complex ideas clearly, especially to non-technical teammates, customers, and stakeholders

• Thrive in ambiguity and take ownership in fast-paced, high-trust environments

• Bonus: Experience with vertical software businesses or agentic AI systems

What You’ll Get

• Competitive comp + meaningful equity

• Employee-centric benefits including:

  • High 401(k( match and FSA program

  • Modern, employer-paid health benefits designed to support you on your terms

• Real ownership, autonomy, and direct collaboration with the founders

• A chance to define a category and shape a product from scratch

• You'll work side-by-side with the founding team, shape our rituals, and help create the moments and memories that define our company.