AI Native Engineer

CookUnity•New York, NY

20h•$130,000 - $190,000•Remote

About The Position

Every team at CookUnity has workflows that could be 10-100x more effective with the right automation. But unlocking that requires someone who can see the opportunity, design the future-state process, build it, and keep it running. That's this role. You'll embed directly with the cross functional AI team as a dedicated AI engineer. Your job isn't to write code faster with AI. It's to fundamentally redesign how work gets done. You'll map existing workflows end-to-end, identify where throwing compute at a task creates step-change value, and then build the solution: sometimes that's an agent, sometimes it's a deterministic internal app, sometimes it's a combination. Knowing which to reach for, and when, is a core part of the job. You'll architect the automated version, build it, and then own it in production: tracking KPIs, managing evals after model changes, and continuously improving. This is equal parts business analyst, systems integrator, and engineer. You'll spend as much time interviewing stakeholders and mapping data flows as you will writing code. You need to be the kind of person who can sit with a team lead, whiteboard a procurement process or a campaign launch workflow, spot the bottleneck that's begging for automation, and have a working prototype by end of week. You'll report to the Head of Applied AI.

Requirements

Demonstrated ability to map a business process and redesign it with automation. This is the #1 skill. Show us a time you took a messy real-world workflow, understood it deeply, and made it dramatically better.
Technical fluency to connect systems and build production workflows. You're comfortable with APIs, CLIs, MCP, databases, and workflow orchestration. You can wire up business systems without waiting for someone else to do it.
Good judgment on agents vs. deterministic tools. You know when an LLM-powered agent is the right call and when a well-built internal app or script is better. You don't reach for AI when a cron job will do, and you don't build brittle rule engines when the task needs reasoning.
Strong foundation in at least one programming language (TypeScript, Python, Kotlin or similar) and ability to build full-stack when needed.
Hands-on experience with LLMs in production, not just prompting, but building reliable systems: structured outputs, eval frameworks, error handling, human-in-the-loop design.
Operational maturity. You don't just build things, you run them. You monitor, measure, iterate, and document.
Communication skills to work cross-functionally. You'll interview stakeholders, present business cases, and explain technical tradeoffs to non-technical leaders.

Nice To Haves

You stay current with the latest releases and capabilities from Anthropic, OpenAI, Vercel, OpenClaw, and others in the agentic/applied AI space. You can talk about what shipped last month and what it changes.
A portfolio of agent-powered workflows or internal tools you've built and deployed. Side projects, work projects, open source, anything with real users.
You understand git, version control workflows, and basic security and safety practices when deploying AI into production environments.
You've written about how you think about Applied AI (blog posts, threads, internal docs).
You've worked with ops, finance, marketing, or another business function, not just engineering.
You've taught non-technical people to use AI tools effectively.

Responsibilities

Map the team's highest-value workflows end-to-end: structured and unstructured data flows, decision points, handoffs, and bottlenecks.
Identify where automation can drive step-change outcomes: processing orders of magnitude more inputs, collapsing multi-day processes into hours, or enabling work that simply wasn't feasible before.
Design the future-state workflow: where an agent acts autonomously, where a deterministic app handles the logic, where humans review, what context is needed, and what guardrails keep it safe.
Build the business case. You can articulate why this workflow matters in terms of time saved, revenue impact, or cost reduced.
Build production workflows and internal tools that the team relies on daily, not just demos.
Use your judgment on the right tool for the job: agentic workflows when tasks require reasoning and flexibility, deterministic apps and scripts when the logic is well-defined and reliability matters most.
Work across the company's toolstack: APIs, CLIs, MCP servers, spreadsheets, data warehouses, workflow orchestration, databases, and whatever else needs connecting.
Create human-in-the-loop interfaces where they matter. Knowing when to automate fully and when to keep a human checkpoint is a core skill.
Write clean, maintainable code. You'll use AI tools to move fast, but you own the quality of what ships.
Own your agents and apps in production. Monitor performance, track KPIs, and explain outcomes to stakeholders.
Manage evals and regression testing after model updates, prompt changes, or upstream data shifts.
Continuously improve: every workflow you own should get measurably better over time.
Build institutional knowledge: document patterns, create playbooks, and teach your team to think in terms of what's now automatable.
Level up your team’s compute fluency and increase AI adoption.

Benefits

Health Insurance coverage
401k Plan
Unlimited PTO
5- year Sabbatical: After 5 years with CookUnity, you get a 4-week paid sabbatical
Paid family leave
Compassionate Leave: 3-5 days each time the need arises
A generous amount of CookUnity credits to enjoy our amazing meals, added to your account, monthly
Wellness perks: access to fitness subsidies to build a healthy lifestyle
AI-forward workplace: enterprise access to ChatGPT and Claude to help you work smarter and grow faster
Personalized Spanish coach