Associate AI Engineer

Fuel Cycle•Los Angeles, CA

18d•$90,000 - $110,000•Onsite

About The Position

Fuel Cycle is hiring an early-career Associate AI Engineer to build and improve production AI agents alongside senior engineers. The role focuses on Python and FastAPI, tool-calling agents built with the Strands Agents framework and AWS Bedrock, and agent deployment on Bedrock AgentCore. Engineers own technical decisions within their assigned problems, with scope growing as they develop. The position is fully in-office in Los Angeles, with mentorship through pair programming, in-person code reviews, and close collaboration. The engineer will contribute to agent workflows, MCP tools and servers, retrieval-augmented generation pipelines, prompt evaluation, and model and tool selection. The role also includes shipping features and fixes in API services backed by PostgreSQL and Redis, contributing to background jobs and queue consumers, and participating in design documentation and code reviews. Fuel Cycle welcomes engineers new to the field and those with roughly one or two years of experience; familiarity with the company’s stack is not required at the outset. Candidates should have solid Python fundamentals, familiarity with data structures and algorithms, SQL, REST and HTTP, and Git-based pull-request workflows. A bachelor’s or master’s degree in computer science or a related field, or equivalent practical experience, is requested. The expected starting salary is $90,000–$110,000, with eligibility for a variable bonus and potentially an equity grant or purchase option.

Requirements

Solid Python skills gained through coursework, internships, or work, including functions, classes, type hints, error handling, and testing basics.
Knowledge of data structures and algorithms, including awareness of time and space complexity.
SQL fundamentals, including joins, aggregations, indexes, and schema design; PostgreSQL exposure is preferred.
Understanding of REST and HTTP concepts and how a web API is structured.
Familiarity with Git and pull-request workflows.
Clear communication, comfort asking questions, and a habit of learning new tools and seeking help when stuck.
Bachelor’s or master’s degree in computer science or a related field, or equivalent practical experience such as bootcamp, self-taught, or on-the-job learning.
Roughly 0–2 years of software engineering experience; internships, research, and substantial projects count.
A track record of learning quickly demonstrated through coursework, projects, work, open-source contributions, or community involvement.
Ability to work fully in-office in Los Angeles.

Nice To Haves

An agent project using Strands Agents, LangChain, the OpenAI SDK, or a similar framework, including experience with how an LLM chooses and calls tools.
Experience building or using MCP tools and servers.
AWS Bedrock or Bedrock AgentCore experience, or AWS fundamentals such as S3 and SQS.
Experience with RAG, including chunking, embeddings, and vector stores.
Prompt engineering experience, including writing, testing, and iterating on prompts.
FastAPI or a similar framework such as Flask or Django; SQLAlchemy or another ORM; and willingness to learn async Python.

Responsibilities

Design, build, and improve AI agents, including tool-calling loops, model configuration, and multi-step workflows using Strands Agents and AWS Bedrock.
Build and integrate Model Context Protocol (MCP) tools and servers.
Deploy and run agents on Bedrock AgentCore in collaboration with the platform team and a mentor.
Build RAG pipelines using pgvector or FAISS and choose chunking, embedding, and retrieval approaches based on results.
Design, test, and iterate on prompts; evaluate answer quality, latency, and token cost; and learn how production guardrails are applied.
Evaluate models, tools, and approaches, recommend which to use, and document the reasoning.
Ship features and bug fixes in FastAPI services, including REST and WebSocket APIs backed by PostgreSQL and Redis.
Contribute to background jobs and queue consumers so agent work runs outside the API request path.
Apply architectural standards, make design choices within them, help maintain design documents, and flag where standards should change.
Submit pull requests, respond to review feedback, and review teammates’ code as experience grows.

Benefits

Medical, dental, and vision insurance plans.
401(k) with company match.
Equity purchase option; the compensation section also notes the role may include an equity grant or purchase option.
Flexible work schedule.
15 vacation days and 7 sick days per year.
12 company holidays and 4 floating holidays/recharge days.
Paid parental leave.
Monthly internet and phone stipend.
Wellness and lifestyle resources, including Rightway, Headspace, and Peloton.
Weekly community lunches, refreshments, and snacks at the Los Angeles and New York headquarters.
Variable bonus eligibility.