Machine Learning Engineer – Applied AI Systems

About Programa

Programa is a fast-growing startup building the operating system for the design industry. Our platform empowers interior designers and architects to manage projects, products, and workflows — all in one modern tool. As we scale, we’re investing heavily in AI to transform how design professionals interact with tools, data, and clients.

We’re looking for a Machine Learning Engineer who thrives at the intersection of ML, infrastructure, and product. In this high-impact, hands-on role, you’ll help build intelligent systems that understand user context, surface relevant products, and drive automation via LLM-powered interfaces. This is a chance to make a real impact by shipping production-grade AI systems — not just prototypes — in a high-velocity startup environment.

What You'll Do

• Design and ship end-to-end ML-powered features across search, recommendations, and automation
• Build and maintain LLM-based agents that interact with structured data, APIs, and user workflows
• Own model deployment and infrastructure (SageMaker, AWS Lambda, OpenSearch, Bedrock)
• Develop embedding pipelines and monitor vector search relevance and performance
• Work on context-aware RAG systems to enable smarter AI assistants
• Build and scale data ingestion and enrichment pipelines (e.g., product data, usage signals)
• Contribute to dbt models that support ML pipelines and business reporting
• Collaborate with engineers to expose internal capabilities as AI tools (e.g., task creation, product matching)
• Help establish an evaluation framework for prompt quality, grounding, and system safety
• Influence our AI platform strategy and architecture as we rapidly scale

What We're Looking For

• 3+ years of experience as a Machine Learning Engineer or backend-oriented AI engineer
• Strong Python skills and familiarity with FastAPI, LangChain, OpenAI SDK
• Experience deploying models in production using SageMaker, Bedrock, Docker, Lambda
• Comfort with cloud infrastructure (AWS preferred) and vector databases (OpenSearch, Pinecone)
• Understanding of RAG, embeddings, and agent-based system design
• Basic experience with Snowflake, dbt, and SQL for supporting data workflows
• Strong collaboration skills with a bias toward shipping and iteration

Bonus Experience

• Experience with LLM orchestration frameworks (e.g., LangGraph, Semantic Kernel)
• Interest in structured context protocols like Model Context Protocol (MCP)
• Background in SaaS or tools for creative/design professionals
• Familiarity with search relevance optimization and product analytics

Why Join Programa?

• Be part of a fast-growing startup with high agency and ambitious goals
• Build AI products that deliver real impact from day one
• Work on production infrastructure — not just notebooks and demos
• Collaborate with a team that values product thinking and fast execution
• Enjoy a flexible hybrid/remote culture