Senior Applied AI Engineer, Retrieval and Semantic Systems

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  Design, build, and ship production retrieval systems that power AI product capabilities

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  Own vector store selection and operation, including scalability, latency, reliability, cost, and multi-tenant design

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  Build indexing and refresh pipelines (chunking, embedding generation, backfills, deletes, versioned indices)

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  Implement semantic retrieval patterns, including embeddings, similarity search, metadata filtering, and reranking

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  Define and run retrieval evaluation: gold sets, offline metrics,, slice analysis, drift detection, and regression gates

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  Partner with platform engineers on CI/CD, service templates, monitoring, and incident readiness while owning retrieval correctness and evolution

• 6+ years of experience building and shipping production ML or applied AI systems

• Proven experience owning a retrieval system in production, including vector store selection and operation

• Strong Python engineering skills and experience building services/APIs (for example, FastAPI or similar)

• Hands-on experience with embeddings, approximate nearest neighbor search concepts, and retrieval or ranking systems

• Experience designing indexing and refresh strategies, including data quality controls and safe backfills

• Strong judgment on tradeoffs across relevance, latency, cost, and operational complexity

• Strong communication skills and ability to collaborate across engineering, product, and research teams

• Experience with hybrid retrieval (lexical plus vector), learning-to-rank, or domain-specific reranking

• Experience with graph-structured context systems or knowledge graph integration

• Experience building evaluation and observability for LLM or retrieval systems (quality drift, failure analysis, regression prevention)

• Experience with AWS-native architectures for retrieval and indexing services

• Experience in education technology, content, curriculum, or skills modeling

In this role, you will define retrieval as a core capability across multiple AI products. You’ll establish the standards and evaluation loops that make semantic systems reliable, measurable, and scalable in production.

We offer competitive, meaningful benefits in every country where we operate. While they vary by location, here's a general idea of what you can expect:

• Competitive compensation, plus all full-time employees participate in our ownership program - because everyone should have a stake in our success.

• Flexible work culture. Our remote, hybrid and in-office collaboration spaces vary by role, team and location.

• Generous time off, including local holidays and our annual “Dim the Lights” period in late December, when teams are encouraged to step back and recharge based on departmental needs.

• Comprehensive wellness programs and mental health support

• Learning and development resources, including professional development tools and tuition reimbursement, to support your growth

• The technology and tools you need to do your best work

• Motivosity employee recognition program

• A culture rooted in inclusivity, support, and meaningful connection

We believe in hiring great people and treating them right. The more diverse we are, the better our ideas and outcomes.

Instructure is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We comply with applicable employment and anti-discrimination laws in every country where we operate.

All employees must pass a background check as part of the hiring process. To help protect our teams and systems, we’ve implemented identity verification measures. Candidates may be asked to verify their legal name, current physical location, and provide a valid contact number and residential address, in accordance with local data privacy laws.

Any attempt to misrepresent personal or professional information will result in disqualification.