Principal AI Engineer
About the job
- Must be located in Latin America.
- Have 12–15+ years of software engineering experience, progressing from backend or systems architecture into applied production machine learning engineering.
- Hold a bachelor's degree or higher in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related technical field.
- Be strongly motivated by coding, system design, and technical problem-solving.
- Have deep experience with production machine learning engineering, including model evaluation, prompt engineering at scale, vector search optimization, fine-tuning, and MLOps tooling.
- Have a demonstrated track record designing distributed systems, asynchronous event-driven architectures, microservices, and multi-tenant platforms in Python, Go, or TypeScript.
- Have practical command of containerization with Docker, cloud infrastructure using AWS, GCP, or Azure, and CI/CD pipelines for shipping and supporting services.
- Have substantive experience with AI/LLM security risks, including prompt injection, data boundary enforcement, model supply chain risks, and threat modeling.
- Have exceptional verbal and written English skills and be able to explain technical trade-offs, architecture decisions, and business impacts directly to senior stakeholders and Product Managers without jargon.
- Design and build maintainable, scalable, resilient production systems integrating machine learning models, large language models, vector databases, and agentic workflows into application architectures.
- Establish model evaluation rubrics, observability pipelines, and benchmarking frameworks to monitor production model performance, drift, latency, costs, and hallucination rates.
- Establish AI agent governance policies covering permissions, code execution controls, system access, human-in-the-loop enforcement, and prompt security and data boundaries.
- Build reusable internal tooling, including AI scaffolding, monitoring systems, and data infrastructure for broad developer adoption.
- Define standardized deployment patterns using containerization, Infrastructure-as-Code, and reusable CI/CD pipelines.
- Codify software development standards for CI/CD, testing, delivery quality, and asynchronous patterns as a baseline for new or re-platformed products.
- Promote AI-assisted development practices, test-driven development, and modern engineering workflows across the organization.
- Mentor engineers and tech leads through code reviews, design documents, and architectural guidance.
- Collaborate with Product Managers from product inception to translate business requirements into feasible, scalable technical architectures.
- Act as the primary technical authority on AI/ML and software architecture, translating architectural choices, model trade-offs such as retrieval-augmented generation versus fine-tuning and latency versus accuracy, and risk topics into actionable executive guidance.
- Prior experience applying AI/ML in business consulting, advisory, or professional services.
- Hands-on experience with multi-agent systems and agent orchestration frameworks, including LangGraph, AutoGen, CrewAI, DSPy, or MCP.
- Active contributions to open-source AI/ML projects, technical publications, or AI community initiatives.
- Experience defining AI compliance controls for SOC 2, ISO 27001, or TISAX frameworks.
About the company
RYZ Labs helps startups grow by providing top-tier technical talent. The company builds startups from the ground up and also supports existing startups looking to scale by supplying skilled engineers, product and design talent, and related development resources. Its approach works by connecting startups with a vetted pool of engineers and experts, enabling hiring, team augmentation, and project-based development to move ideas into working products quickly. RYZ Labs differentiates itself by offering end-to-end startup support rather than just staffing, combining startup-building experience with rapid access to senior technical teams, and a focus on helping startups achieve rapid, scalable growth. The goal is to help startups launch, grow, and succeed by assembling strong technical teams fast.
Company Size
51-200
Company Stage
N/A
Total Funding
N/A
Headquarters
Los Angeles, California
Founded
2021
Get referred to RYZ Labs
See people who can refer or advise you
Simplify's Take
What believers are saying
- In 2026, RYZ Labs posted dozens of open roles across Argentina, Buenos Aires, and Los Angeles.
- Its March 2026 blog claims 50% faster time-to-market through founder-paced LatAm engineering.
- RYZ Labs is hiring Head of Enterprise AI Sales, signaling enterprise expansion.
What critics are saying
- RYZ Labs still relies on contract labor; retention and quality control stay brittle.
- Its 2026 job board includes many AI-trainer roles, exposing commoditization pressure.
- Binding arbitration in Los Angeles and class-action waivers increase employee and customer friction.
What makes RYZ Labs unique
- Jordan Metzner and Sam Nadler built RYZ Labs as a venture studio-plus-staffing hybrid.
- RYZ Labs pairs startup incubation with LatAm engineering, design, data, and AI talent.
- Since 2022, RYZ Labs launched HipTrain and Offsiteio before outside investment.
Help us improve and share your feedback! Did you find this helpful?
Benefits
Remote Work Options
Growth & Insights and Company News
6 month growth
35%1 year growth
35%2 year growth
35%A new hybrid startup studio and human capital agency called RYZ Labs has been officially launched by entrepreneurs Jordan Metzner and Sam Nadler. RYZ was launched in Los Angeles to leverage top-tier technical talent in Latin America. Metzner and Sam Nadler worked at Amazon and Lyft before returning to entrepreneurship