Principal AI Engineer - Personalization and Recommendation (Remote)

About the role

Rula is a remote‑first mental health company seeking a Principal AI Engineer to own applied AI and ML solutions that power patient‑provider matching, clinical workflows, and patient engagement. The role focuses on building production‑grade recommendation and search systems that improve relevance and personalization in a high‑stakes healthcare environment.

Key responsibilities

• Design and ship production‑grade AI features such as learning‑to‑rank models, embeddings, recommendation algorithms, and LLM‑based workflows.
• Architect both product‑facing AI services and core ML infrastructure, ensuring scalability, safety, and compliance.
• Lead technical decisions for AI safety standards, MLOps pipelines, and evaluation frameworks (offline metrics, A/B testing).
• Mentor engineers across product teams, acting as a technical multiplier for AI initiatives.

Required profile

• 10+ years of software engineering experience, including 7+ years designing and scaling distributed systems.
• 5+ years building and deploying production‑grade ML applications, especially search, ranking, or recommendation engines.
• Strong track record working with both traditional search infrastructure (Elasticsearch, OpenSearch) and modern vector databases (Pinecone, Weaviate, FAISS, Milvus).

Required skills

• Python programming.
• Backend development in TypeScript, Java, or Go.
• Experience with foundation models (OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini) and LLM integration patterns (RAG, agents).
• Proficiency in MLOps, data pipelines, and rigorous evaluation (NDCG, MAP, online A/B testing).

What we offer

• 100% remote work (U.S. based, excluding Hawaii).
• Transparent pay ranges and attractive compensation.
• Comprehensive health benefits (medical, dental, vision, life, disability, FSA/HSA).
• 401(k) plan with company matching.
• Generous paid time off, parental leave, and company‑wide shutdown weeks.
• Home office stipend, monthly internet/phone stipend, and wellness stipend.