Member of Technical Staff (Applied AI)

Department: Engineering

Location: Toronto

Compensation: $140K – $260K • 0.25% – 1%

Employment Type: FullTime

About Steel

Steel is building open-source browser infrastructure for AI agents and apps. We make it easy for developers to ship AI products that interact with the web using our Sessions API.

With over 6,000 GitHub stars, dozens of paying customers, and millions of sessions served monthly, we grew our platform 50x in 2025 purely through word-of-mouth and our open-source community. Backed by world-class investors, we're building a small, highly motivated, talent-dense team that's shaping the future of how humans interact with the internet.

More on the problems we're solving: https://docs.steel.dev/overview/intro-to-steel

The Role

We're looking for an Applied AI Engineer to shape how AI agents interact with the web by building the frameworks, demos, and developer experience that make Steel indispensable for AI developers.

The work sits at the intersection of product, research, and community. You'll run experiments to figure out what actually works for browser automation with AI, then turn those insights into frameworks and content that developers love. You'll become the bridge between AI agent builders and Steel, working directly with our founding team to define what gets built, publish research that establishes Steel as the authority on browser agents, and create the demos and integrations that bring thousands of developers to our platform.

This isn't a traditional ML engineer role or a pure DevRel role. It's both and neither. You'll need to be comfortable shipping production code, running experiments, and creating content that teaches developers. We work hard, move fast, and expect the same intensity from our team. Late nights and weekend work are part of building something exceptional.

Sample projects could include

• Building a TypeScript browser agent framework that vertically integrates LLMs, Steel's infrastructure, and developer tooling

• Running experiments to answer questions developers care about: which models work best for browser automation? Which prompting strategies? Which architectures?

• Creating open-source demos and applications that showcase what's possible with AI agents and Steel's browser infrastructure

• Building integrations with AI frameworks like LangChain, CrewAI, and emerging agent platforms to ensure Steel plays well in the ecosystem

• Writing technical blog posts and publishing experiments that establish Steel as the definitive place to learn about building browser agents

• Partnering with our Founding Growth Lead to turn your experiments and demos into content that drives developer adoption

• Working with customers to understand their browser agent needs and translating feedback into product features and improvements

You could be a great Applied AI Engineer @ Steel if you

• Have 4+ years engineering experience and have shipped production AI agents that do real things (web scraping, form filling, research automation)

• Are product-minded and ship features customers want, not just cool research projects. You balance innovation with pragmatism and know when to iterate

• Have deep AI literacy and stay current on models (GPT-4, Claude, Gemini, open source), frameworks, and techniques. You can evaluate tradeoffs quickly

• Are comfortable creating content. You write blog posts, publish experiments, create demos, and enjoy teaching developers how to build better things

• Have strong TypeScript/JavaScript and Python skills and understand both web development and AI application patterns

• Are open-source native. You've contributed to or maintained OSS projects and understand how to build community around code

• Can scope and ship quickly. You define v1, ship in months not years, and iterate based on real usage

• Thrive taking projects from 0 to 1 with minimal guidance and love owning things end-to-end

• Friends describe you as cracked

Nice-to-haves

• Ex-founder experience

• Experience building developer tools or frameworks that gained community adoption

• Active presence in AI/ML communities (X, GitHub, Discord)

• Experience working at AI-first companies or on agent platforms

Our Tech Stack

Our tech stack is mostly TypeScript, which helps with cohesion on the frontend/backend/orchestration, allowing anyone to jump in and help anywhere.

• Frontend: Vanilla React + TailwindCSS + Shadcn, built with Vite, deployed on Vercel

• Backend: Fastify, Node.js, Zod, NATs, Drizzle with Redis, PostgreSQL, and S3

• Infrastructure: Pulumi, Go, Firecracker VMs, Docker

• Tools: GitHub, Discord, Notion, Figma

What We Offer

• Build the browser infrastructure that will power the next million AI agents

• Solve deeply technical problems in distributed systems, virtualization, and browser automation

• Shape our open-source ecosystem and engage with a growing community of AI engineers

• Partner with a fast-paced technical founding team shipping high impact work daily

• Founding team-level equity as employee #5-7

• Work with innovative AI companies transforming healthcare, supply chain, accounting, and more

• Shape a category: browser infrastructure for AI agents

Benefits: Competitive salary, health and dental insurance for you and your family, regular team events and off-sites, brand-new laptop setup, gym membership subsidies.