Sr. Applied AI Engineer

Location: Wilmington, NC

Department: Engineering

Location Type: REMOTE

Employment Type: FULL_TIME

• Our Implementation and CE teams have a validated backlog of high-value AI builds — risk surfacing, workflow intelligence, client coaching, configuration assistance — and no dedicated engineering resources to execute on them. You change that.

• Design and ship ML and LLM systems spanning supervised models that predict and rank, retrieval and generation systems that draft and summarize, and agentic workflows that act on internal data
• Build evaluation infrastructure alongside every system — define success criteria before writing code, measure whether the system worked, and catch regressions before users do
• Architect RAG, retrieval, and context engineering patterns that let LLMs operate reliably on internal knowledge and production data
• Reason rigorously about modeling choices — label definition, leakage, time-aware splits, calibration, precision-at-k vs AUC, when a heuristic baseline beats a model
• Work directly in Databricks and Unity Catalog — understand the operational data, write the SQL, and build systems that act on it
• Own deployment and monitoring for everything you ship — feature drift, outcome tracking, LLM eval regression, retraining cadence, rollback paths
• Treat data governance and access scoping as design constraints, not afterthoughts
• Maintain versioned, traceable LLM workflows — prompts and context patterns that are reusable, not one-off

• Production experience shipping both classical ML and LLM systems — strong opinions on when to use which
• An eval-first mindset — you don't trust a system you haven't measured, and you build the measurement before the model
• Fluency in a data warehouse environment — SQL, time-aware feature engineering, leakage discipline
• Production scars — you've watched a model degrade in the wild, seen a label loop bias itself, caught an LLM provider regression with the prompt unchanged
• Cost intuition — you can napkin-math the unit economics of an LLM workflow before committing to it
• Ability to scope work in partnership with non-technical stakeholders, translating their pain into a buildable system
• Comfort with distinguishing the business metric from the model metric, and arguing for the right one

• You use AI tools (Claude, Cursor, Claude Code, or equivalent) as a core part of your daily workflow. Not occasionally. As a thinking partner and execution accelerator.
• Python proficiency as your primary build language for automation and scripting
• Full-stack range: comfortable building APIs, automations, integrations, and lightweight UIs without needing a separate front-end resource
• SQL and data fluency: you will work regularly in our data warehouse and need to understand and act on operational data directly
• API integration experience: REST, webhooks, OAuth
• RAG and retrieval system experience: chunking, embedding strategies, retrieval quality, hallucination mitigation
• Prompt and context engineering: you understand why context boundaries matter and have a strategy for what to persist vs. retrieve
• DevOps fundamentals: CI/CD, Infrastructure as Code, containerization. You ship and maintain what you build.
• AI/ML background is required; CS or AI/ML academic track preferred

• Spec-first by default: you write detailed intent documents before building. Resistance to structured planning upfront is a disqualifier for this role.
• Bias toward shipping: you prefer a v1 in two weeks over architecting a v3 for two months
• Product sense for non-technical users: you can translate operational pain into a scoped technical solution without requiring a detailed spec from the person who has the problem
• Comfortable as the first and only: you are energized by operating as the sole AI engineer in a domain, without a peer engineering org to lean on day to day
• Builder, not buyer: you build internal tooling and do not stitch together SaaS products
• Security-aware: you ask about access scoping and data classification before you build, not after
• Comfortable with ambiguity: requirements will shift; you orient toward the outcome
• Strong written communicator: you document your intent before you build and leave clear records of what you built and why

• Always Growing: Likes change and enjoys finding new ways to improve their knowledge and the product. Always ready to learn quickly, helping themselves and the team grow. 
• Win as a Team: Builds trust and works together by making sure everyone communicates well. Actively involved in daily work, working closely with the team, listening to their ideas, and celebrating successes together. 
• Accountability Starts with Me: Notices problems and takes personal action to solve them. 
• Unwavering Commitment to Customer Experience: Regularly talks to residents and management companies, taking personal responsibility to understand what they need, address concerns, and make their experience better with improved Vantaca processes. 
• Innovate Boldly: We challenge the status quo and push boundaries to create meaningful change. We act with urgency and purpose, knowing that innovation drives our success. 

• Build consumer products that millions use. Shape how homeowners across the country interact with their communities every day. 
• AI-First Product Culture with access to cutting-edge tools and autonomy to experiment. 
• Our eNPS is +68! (Google it, that is great) 
• Benefits: Medical, Dental, and Vision kick in day one 
• Unlimited PTO (with a requirement for employees to take a minimum of one continuous week per year) 
• 401K with Company Match 
• Remote Flexible - come to the office when needed 
• Great parental leave benefits 
• Unicorn-stage growth: $1.25B valuation, $300M Series C, scaling from 275 to 400+ employees 
• Named on Inc 5000 list of America's Fastest Growing Private Companies 
• Named on Inc 5000 Vet 100 Private Companies list multiple years in a row 
• Winner of Coastal Entrepreneur Award, Technology Category 
• Active employee-led Culture Committee 
• Ongoing industry and professional development trainings available to all employees 
• Multiple leaders on the executive committee recognized as 40 under 40 recipients for contributions to business and community 
• We're playing offense to win! Our product market fit and our world-class employees make us the leader in our space. We're building something cool and people like it here.