San Francisco, CA, USA+1 moreMore locations: San Mateo, CA, USA
In PersonBased in either the San Mateo or San Francisco office.
Software EngineeringAI Application Engineering
About the job
Requirements
At least 7 years of software engineering experience, including at least 2 years at Senior or Staff level owning cross-team initiatives.
Strong production experience building AI-powered product features using large language models or similar foundation models.
Experience integrating and optimizing model endpoints in production.
Strong Python experience and working knowledge of modern backend or API development.
Experience shipping features that use large language models, retrieval, tool use, prompts, or structured outputs.
Comfort working with large models and applying them to real product workflows.
Experience improving latency, cost, reliability, and quality of AI systems.
Ability to evaluate model performance with practical product metrics and user feedback.
Ability to work across Product, Design, and Engineering.
Comfort building systems that balance automation with human review and control.
A bachelor's degree is required; equivalent experience will be considered.
Responsibilities
Build AI-powered product experiences that help users complete complex workflows faster and with less friction, applying large models to customer problems across admin, broker, and employee journeys.
Integrate hosted large language models into production systems using model endpoints and APIs; tune latency, reliability, throughput, token usage, and cost while maintaining quality and trust.
Build and improve AI ingestion pipelines to extract and structure data from plan documents and related inputs, focusing on performance, quality, and operational reliability.
Design AI features that produce grounded, traceable, and auditable outputs, making recommendations understandable and traceable to source data.
Use models and structured data to power tailored recommendations and decision support for employees, admins, and internal operators.
Develop systems combining prompts, retrieval, and internal tools; build guardrails, fallbacks, and structured output patterns for dependable model behavior.
Create evaluation workflows measuring accuracy, grounding, completeness, and user impact using offline tests, human review, and production feedback.
Design human-in-the-loop workflows where people review, approve, or correct model assistance; build systems that learn from feedback and improve over time.
Partner with Product, Design, and domain experts to identify valuable AI use cases, define acceptable failure modes, and turn ambiguous workflows into production-ready features.
Set engineering standards for AI feature development, mentor engineers, and establish patterns to scale AI across the product.
Desired Qualifications
Experience building AI features in benefits, HR technology, PEO, payroll, insurance, or other compliance-heavy domains.
Familiarity with hosted large language model providers and model APIs.
Experience with prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation, or agentic workflows.
Experience with evaluation frameworks, observability, and feedback loops for AI products.
Experience with structured extraction from documents or forms.
Familiarity with graph-based or structured domain modeling.
Experience with human-in-the-loop systems, review queues, or approval workflows.
Experience with multi-tenant or privacy-sensitive production systems.
Comfort with product experimentation and rapid iteration on AI features.
Who We Are:
PeopleLoop is an AI-powered experience that modernizes benefits and PEO solutions for people-driven companies. It reduces complexity and errors across critical people operations, gives leaders clearer insight into compensation and benefits costs, trends, and tradeoffs, and delivers a more modern employee experience. Visit PeopleLoop.com or follow us on LinkedIn to learn more.
We’re rethinking the space end-to-end—pairing structured data, AI-powered workflows, and modern product experiences to help HR admins, brokers, and employees get better outcomes with less manual work. In this role, you’ll build AI features that are embedded directly into the product experience. You’ll work on systems that use large models to ingest documents, support compliance reasoning, power personalized recommendations, and automate complex workflows. This is an applied AI role focused on shipping product using models, not training foundation models from scratch.
As a Staff-level engineer, you’ll set patterns, mentor engineers, drive design reviews and RFCs, and help define how AI is built and operated across the product. Our backend is primarily Python, with supporting services in Node/TypeScript.
What you get to do:
AI Product Features: Build AI-powered product experiences that help users complete complex workflows faster and with less friction. Apply large models to real customer problems across admin, broker, and employee journeys.
Model Integration and Optimization: Work directly with model endpoints and APIs, integrating hosted LLMs into production systems. Tune latency, reliability, throughput, token usage, and cost while maintaining quality and trust.
AI Plan Ingestion: Build and improve ingestion pipelines that use AI to extract and structure data from plan documents and related inputs. Focus on practical performance, quality, and operational reliability.
Explainable Outputs: Design AI features that produce grounded, traceable, and auditable outputs. Make sure users can understand how recommendations were generated and what source data they are based on.
Personalized Decision Support: Use models and structured data to power tailored recommendations and decision support for employees, admins, and internal operators.
Prompting, Retrieval, and Tool Use: Develop systems that combine prompts, retrieval, and internal tools to produce useful outcomes. Build guardrails, fallbacks, and structured output patterns that make model behavior dependable.
Evaluation and Quality: Create evaluation workflows to measure accuracy, grounding, completeness, and user impact. Use offline tests, human review, and production feedback to continuously improve AI features.
AI + Human-in-the-Loop Workflows: Design workflows where the model assists users, but humans review, approve, and correct when needed. Build systems that learn from feedback and improve over time.
Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner closely with Product, Design, and domain experts to identify where AI adds the most value, define acceptable failure modes, and turn ambiguous workflows into production-ready features.
Technical Leadership: Set engineering standards for AI feature development, mentor other engineers, and help establish the patterns that will scale AI across the product.
What you bring:
7+ years of software engineering experience, with 2+ years at Senior or Staff level owning cross-team initiatives
Strong production experience building AI-powered product features using large language models or similar foundation models
Experience integrating and optimizing model endpoints in production
Strong Python experience, with working knowledge of modern backend or API development
Experience shipping features that use LLMs, retrieval, tool use, prompts, or structured outputs
Comfort working with large models and applying them to real product workflows
Experience improving latency, cost, reliability, and quality of AI systems
Ability to evaluate model performance with practical product metrics and user feedback
Strong collaboration skills and ability to work across Product, Design, and Engineering
Comfort building systems that balance automation with human review and control
Bachelor’s degree required, preferably in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical discipline; equivalent experience will be considered
Nice to have
Experience building AI features in benefits, HR tech, PEO, payroll, insurance, or other compliance-heavy domains
Familiarity with hosted LLM providers and model APIs
Experience with prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation, or agentic workflows
Experience with evaluation frameworks, observability, and feedback loops for AI products
Experience with structured extraction from documents or forms
Familiarity with graph-based or structured domain modeling
Human-in-the-loop systems, review queues, or approval workflows
Experience with multi-tenant or privacy-sensitive production systems
Comfort with product experimentation and rapid iteration on AI features
Location requirement: This role is based in either of San Mateo or San Francisco Office.
Peopleloop’s Culture – Our most important asset
Integrity
Passion for service
Innovative
Growth oriented
Caring for others
Promise-centric
Focused on relationship building
PeopleLoop provides equal opportunity to all applicants without regard to race, color, creed, religion, citizenship, national origin, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, pregnancy, marital status, military or veteran status, disability, or any other basis prohibited by applicable law.
Compensation & Benefits PeopleLoop provides competitive compensation including base salary, performance-based bonus programs, equity, and comprehensive benefits package.