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Workstream

HR platform automating hiring and onboarding

Senior AI Engineer

Full-Time
No salary listed
Senior
Washington, USA
RemoteOccasional in-office visits as needed.
Software EngineeringAI Application Engineering

About the job

Requirements
  • Personally built and operated at least one AI agent or agentic workflow in production, and can explain how it worked, where it failed, how it was evaluated, and what was kept deterministic or human-led.
  • Strong engineering judgment across models, orchestration, application programming interfaces, data and integrations, permissions, observability, and evaluations.
  • Direct customer or end-user experience in discovery, implementation, or incident resolution, with the ability to communicate clearly with non-technical people.
  • Ability to break a messy workflow into deterministic steps, agentic decisions, human judgment, and exception paths, and define how each part will be tested.
  • Ability to keep plausible but incorrect AI output away from customers through grounded context, constrained actions, verification, evaluations, review, and monitoring.
  • Ability to thrive in zero-to-one ambiguity, ship weekly, own outcomes, and do whatever the service needs, including review tooling and data plumbing.
Responsibilities
  • Build and operate production agents and agentic workflows, including orchestration, tool use, data connections, deterministic logic, state, and permissions.
  • Work forward-deployed with design customers, understand their workflows and operational realities, and build against live data.
  • Build the evaluation harness, including evaluation datasets from real customer work, pre-launch thresholds, regression suites, and post-launch monitoring.
  • Build the human-review layer, including exception queues, review tooling, escalation paths, and tracing that makes every agent decision auditable.
  • Run shadow-mode parallel runs against customers’ existing processes or providers and resolve discrepancies before go-live.
  • Turn customer-specific work into reusable agents, integrations, and playbooks, prioritizing productization over customization.
  • Handle production incidents end to end and feed failures back into evaluations and controls to prevent recurrence.
  • Help set the technical bar as the team grows.
Desired Qualifications
  • Exposure to a regulated domain such as payroll, payments, tax, benefits, or labor compliance.

About the company

Workstream is a HR technology platform that helps businesses hire and onboard hourly workers. It provides a full set of tools—applicant tracking, digital onboarding, payroll, and employee engagement—within one system. AI acts as a personal hiring assistant to answer applicant questions and collect applications automatically, speeding recruiting and reducing manual work. It uses a subscription model to give firms ongoing access, differentiating itself by combining hiring, onboarding, payroll, and engagement in one platform for frontline staff with automation.

Company Size

201-500

Company Stage

Series B

Total Funding

$118M

Headquarters

San Francisco, California

Founded

2017

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Simplify Jobs

Simplify's Take

What believers are saying

  • MenuSifu partnership launched November 20, 2025, expanding Asian restaurant reach.
  • Workstream's partner program and OTC26 roadmap deepened distribution and integration activity in July 2026.
  • Updated 2026 funding pages show $108 million raised, supporting product expansion.

What critics are saying

  • Rippling and Toast bundle hiring, payroll, and scheduling, compressing Workstream's differentiation in 2026.
  • Workstream's restaurant concentration ties revenue to franchise procurement cycles and partner integrations.
  • If MenuSifu integration slips past early 2026, Workstream loses a major distribution bet.

What makes Workstream unique

  • Workstream targets hourly-workforce hiring, HR, and payroll, not generic white-collar HR.
  • Forty-six of top 50 QSR brands used Workstream in August 2026.
  • MenuSifu integration in early 2026 embeds Workstream into restaurant operating systems.

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Benefits

  • Medical, dental, & vision
  • Paid counseling sessions
  • Competitive market compensation
  • Generous stock
  • Flexible PTO
  • Paid parental leave
  • Professional development

Growth & Insights and Company News

Headcount

6 month growth

-1%

1 year growth

0%

2 year growth

-3%
PR Newswire
Nov 20th, 2025
MenuSifu Expands Ecosystem with Workstream Partnership to Simplify Restaurant Hiring and HR

MenuSifu expands ecosystem with Workstream partnership to simplify restaurant hiring and HR. News provided by. NEW YORK, Nov. 20, 2025 /PRNewswire/ - MenuSifu, the No. 1 restaurant technology provider among Asian restaurants in the United States, today announced a strategic partnership with Workstream, a modern hiring, HR, and payroll platform built for the hourly workforce. The collaboration adds workforce management to MenuSifu's growing ecosystem, giving restaurant operators an easier way to hire, manage, and retain employees. The partnership will kick off with a joint webinar on December 10, where both companies will share best practices for simplifying HR and payroll operations. Operators can reserve a spot at www.menusifu.com/events/workstream-webinar. A full integration of Workstream's tools into the MenuSifu platform is planned for early 2026, bringing end-to-end employee management directly into MenuSifu's connected suite of restaurant technology solutions. MenuSifu has become the trusted technology partner in the Asian restaurant community. By adding Workstream's mobile-first hiring and HR automation to its platform, MenuSifu extends its leadership in creating a truly future-ready ecosystem that now spans POS, payments, online ordering, automation - and soon, workforce management. "This partnership reflects our mission to empower restaurants with connected, future-ready technology," said William Wang, Cofounder & CEO of MenuSifu. "Workstream shares our belief that success starts with people. Together, we're giving operators a simpler, smarter way to grow their teams and their businesses." "Workstream and MenuSifu both serve the heartbeat of the restaurant industry - independent operators," added Desmond Lim, CEO of Workstream. "By connecting hiring and HR directly with MenuSifu's operations platform, we're helping restaurants hire faster, retain longer, and build stronger teams for the future." The joint initiative underscores MenuSifu's broader roadmap to integrate AI, automation, payments, financing, and now HR into a single, seamless ecosystem. Restaurant owners interested in learning more or joining the upcoming webinar can visit menusifu.com/events/workstream-webinar. About MenuSifu Founded in 2014, MenuSifu is the No. 1 restaurant technology provider among Asian restaurants in the U.S., serving over 15,000 operators nationwide. Its ecosystem spans POS, payments, online ordering, automation, and AI-powered analytics - helping restaurants thrive, scale, and stay future-ready. About Workstream Workstream is a modern HR, hiring, and payroll platform built for the hourly workforce. Trusted by thousands of restaurants and franchise brands, Workstream helps operators streamline hiring, automate onboarding, and simplify team management - all from one mobile-friendly platform. more press release views with

NBC Bay Area
Feb 12th, 2025
Workstream raises $120M, founder's key insight

Desmond Lim, co-founder and CEO of Workstream, a platform for the hourly workforce, raised $120 million. Lim's journey from humble beginnings in Singapore to Harvard graduate and entrepreneur highlights the importance of making the right choices over just hard work. His success is attributed to curiosity and learning from others. Workstream's first investor was Zoom's Eric Yuan, and its backers include Peter Thiel and Jay-Z. Lim emphasizes exploring passions as crucial to success.

Business Wire
Nov 12th, 2024
Workstream Welcomes Restaurant Industry Leader Nadeem Bajwa as Strategic Advisor

Workstream welcomes restaurant industry leader Nadeem Bajwa as Strategic Advisor.

DHRM AP
Sep 30th, 2024
Workstream Launches First All-in-One Payroll Solution for the Hourly Workforce

Workstream has launched an all-in-one payroll solution tailored specifically for businesses that employ hourly workers, such as QSR franchisees and restaurants.

Total Food Service
Sep 8th, 2023
Workstream Launches HR Platform for Hourly Workforce Efficiency

Workstream launches HR platform for hourly workforce efficiency.