AI Engineer (Conversational AI)

Company Description

Yuna's mission is to radically transform the way mental health support is accessed and delivered. By providing 24/7 instant and private support at the push of a button, we aim to address the significant gaps in mental health care accessibility. In a system where waiting times for therapists can reach up to 48 days and many people can't even afford care, Yuna is the answer to immediate mental health support needs.

We’re growing quickly, and every person who joins us plays a pivotal role in shaping the future of mental health technology.

Position Overview

You’ll be building Yuna’s core conversational intelligence. This spans retrieval, memory, safety, and evaluation. You’ll ship user-visible improvements quickly while raising the bar on empathy, reliability, and guardrails.

What you’ll do

• Design agentic flows (tool use, planning, multi-turn memory) and safe retrieval for mental-health use cases
• Work closely with clinical psychologists (both internal and external to Yuna), ensuring the efficacy of Yuna’s conversational AI
• Build and own the evaluation flywheel: benchmarks, judge models, rubrics for conversational quality, ability to help, safety
• Design, build, and operate services for conversation state, user memory, retrieval, and tool integrations (REST/gRPC).
• Collaborate with front end teams for API creation, QA, and implementation
• Implement alignment & safety layers (e.g., self-harm detection, red-teaming, refusal strategies, escalation paths) tuned to clinical guidelines
• Optimize for latency, cost, and quality
• Partner tightly with product, sales, and users to scope new features and

What you’ll bring

• 5+ years building backend systems in production (Python/Go/NodeJS), with strong systems and API design skills
• Hands-on experience with LangGraph and building agentic systems (tool calling, memory, orchestration)
• Experience deploying and operating services on Kubernetes, including debugging production issues
• Deep skill in Python and modern deep learning stacks (PyTorch/JAX/TensorFlow)
• Proficiency with relational + vector/search systems and real-time communication (sockets, WebRTC, LiveKit)
• Comfort working with ambiguity and creating systems 0 to 1

Location: Remote (can work from anywhere, but must overlap working hours with UTC from 2pm - 8pm)

Employment Type: Full Time

What We Offer

• Competitive salary (based on experience) + equity options
• Remote-first culture with flexibility
• A fast-growing, talented, and empathetic team dedicated to transforming mental health care
• The opportunity to make a real impact on the world, building cutting-edge AI systems that improve lives every day