AI Operations Engineer

Coast • New York, NY

2d • $150,000 - $180,000

About The Position

Coast is building modern payments and spend-management products for fleet businesses, including fuel cards, corporate cards, and bill pay. The company is expanding its use of AI so repeatable work can be handled by AI while employees focus on customers and complex problems. The AI Operations Engineer will be one of two engineers on a small internal AI team and will report to the AI Lead.

This is a builder role with an operator’s mindset. The engineer will identify high-impact work across Sales, Customer Success, Marketing, Support, Finance, Risk, Product, and Operations, then own projects from discovery through production. The work may include coding, facilitating workshops, or redesigning processes with teams. The role focuses on building autonomous agents and shared infrastructure that improves how employees use AI.

Within the first six months, the engineer is expected to ship at least three agents that teams use daily, with evaluations demonstrating month-over-month improvement. The role aims to deliver measurable gains in operating efficiency, tracked in hours saved. Responsibilities also include maintaining production reliability, latency, and cost; partnering with Security and IT on access and sensitive-data handling; and enabling company-wide AI adoption through infrastructure, training, office hours, hackathons, and AI champions.

Requirements

• 2–5 years of experience in operations, product, solutions or forward-deployed engineering, internal tools, or a similar role at a fast-moving company.
• A track record of shipping AI workflows or automations that people use every day; candidates should be able to show what they built.
• Hands-on fluency with Claude Code, Cursor, or similar coding agents, and LLM tooling such as prompt design, tool use, and MCP.
• Experience building at least one agent with persistent memory or a feedback loop that improved it over time.
• Experience with evaluations, including building test sets, scoring outputs, and using results to improve an agent.
• Comfort writing and reading code, including SQL and Python or TypeScript scripting, APIs, and webhooks.
• Clear communication with non-technical teammates, including the ability to teach as well as build.
• High agency, including the ability to identify inefficient processes and fix them without waiting to be asked.

Nice To Haves

• Software engineering background.
• Experience building with MCP servers or APIs for tools such as Salesforce, Notion, Slack, and Gmail.
• Experience with guardrails or monitoring for AI systems.
• Background in fintech, payments, or another regulated industry.
• Startup experience, especially at an AI-native company.

Responsibilities

• Work with teams to map workflows, estimate potential time savings, and prioritize opportunities with the AI Lead.
• Build and ship event-driven autonomous agents that perform multi-step work across Coast’s technology stack.
• Design agent loops, orchestration, sub-agent handoffs, and escalation to humans.
• Model shared memory as a knowledge graph and determine what agents should see, remember, and forget.
• Build custom tools required by agents.
• Trace agent runs, create test sets from real outcomes, score outputs, and use evaluations to improve each version.
• Define success metrics for each project, track adoption and time saved, and report results to leadership.
• Own the reliability, latency, and cost of agents in production, and detect regressions before users do.
• Partner with Security and IT on access, audit trails, and sensitive-data handling.
• Architect shared AI infrastructure, including knowledge bases, application databases, templates, tools, and connectors.
• Enable employees through training, office hours, and hackathons, and develop a network of AI champions.
• Evaluate new models and tools against current systems and improve existing solutions.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance.
• Flexible paid time off, including vacation, personal well-being time, and paid holidays.
• Financial-wellness resources, including webinars and access to an equity tax advisory service.
• Company-sponsored 401(k).
• Paid parental leave.
• $400 accessories allowance for items such as a keyboard, mouse, or headphones.
• Education stipend.
• Free lunch every Friday.
• Equity grant with potential upside.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Education Level: No Education Listed