Principal AI Engineer
About The Position
About Rhythms Rhythms is building the AI business execution system that enables enterprises to become AI-native—fundamentally rethinking how organizations operate, execute, and scale. We're founded by entrepreneurs who built and sold Chronus (acquired by PE) and Ally.io (acquired by Microsoft). We've raised a $26M seed round from top investors including GreenOaks, Madrona, and Accel, alongside CXOs from global technology leaders—earning GeekWire's 2024 Deal of the Year and named a 2025 AI Innovation of the Year finalist. Rhythms transform how enterprises become AI-native by connecting strategic planning and OKRs directly to day-to-day execution and real-time progress tracking. Built on multi-agent AI architecture, our platform connects with Slack, Teams, Jira, Linear, and other daily tools to automate operational workflows, surface predictive insights and risks, eliminate manual status updates, and build organizational memory that grows smarter over time. Enterprise customers choose us because we're making agentic AI reliable enough to run critical business operations. The Role You'll work directly with CEO Vetri Vellore to build our AI operating system from the ground up. This means you'll touch everything - from designing multi-agent architectures and LLM orchestration, to building production systems, to shipping features that directly impact enterprise customers. We're in the early stages - this is not a scale-up role. This is a "roll up your sleeves and build something from scratch" role alongside engineers from IIT, Stanford, and other top-tier institutions who ship production AI daily. What We're Looking For AI-First Builder – Deep expertise in production-ready AI systems and agentic workflows, not just demos Ship Fast, Learn Faster – Entrepreneurial ownership mentality with bias toward shipping and iterating in production Technical Leadership – Proven ability to architect complex AI systems, build evals-first, and make data-backed decisions System Design Excellence – Strong architectural skills to design scalable, maintainable systems that balance complexity and pragmatism Clear Communicator – Translate technical tradeoffs and risks effectively to both engineering teams and business stakeholders Passion for the Cutting Edge – Deep curiosity and drive to explore, apply, and productionize the newest AI models and technologies
Requirements
- AI Engineering Excellence 7+ years building production software with at least 2+ years deeply focused on LLMs, agents, or AI-native applications
- Expert proficiency in Python and experience with React/Next.js for AI-powered UIs
- Experience shipping agentic systems to production.
- Experience with RAG implementations: Hybrid search, Re-ranking, context optimization, and retrieval quality measurement.
- Technical Leadership Designed and architected distributed systems at production scale.
- Proven ability to influence technical direction across multiple teams while mentoring engineers
- Track record of driving ambiguous, high-impact initiatives from concept to measurable business outcomes
- Effective collaboration across distributed teams spanning US and India time zones
Nice To Haves
- Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science or related field, or equivalent experience with demonstrable technical excellence
- Contributed to open source AI projects or published research
- Background in high-scale distributed systems
- Based in or willing to relocate to San Francisco Bay Area
Benefits
- Your Opportunity To Shape the Future of Enterprise AI Build the core AI systems powering autonomous execution for thousands of organizations
- Your technical leadership will define how enterprises actually run on AI—chat-native experiences, multi-agent orchestration, enterprise-grade reliability
- Work with cutting-edge tech stack
- Work With World-Class Team Collaborate with engineers from IIT, Stanford, and top-tier institutions who've scaled systems to millions
- Learn from CEO Vetri who is a Microsoft Veteran and a serial entrepreneur with successful exits
- Join at 15 people where your code and architectural decisions directly shape the product—no layers between you and impact
- Own Meaningful Equity Significant equity stake at early stage (15 people = meaningful ownership)
- $26M runway, paying enterprise customers, sustainable path—build the right product, not chase next fundraise
- Work with founders who've built and sold companies—they know what matters
- Real Impact, Immediately Day one: You'll be shipping code to production—we deploy daily
- First week: Your code will be running in production for enterprise customers
- First month: You'll own major features that thousands of users depend on
- Six months: Your architecture decisions will define how enterprises operate with AI
- Join customer calls, hear feedback directly, and see your code transform how organizations work in real-time
- Embrace Entrepreneurial Environment Take ownership of technical decisions with real autonomy—strong opinions backed by evals get shipped
- AI-native culture: use Cursor and Claude Code for development, Claude Code reviews PRs, ship AI features weekly
- Flat structure, direct feedback, open technical debates—better ideas win
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Principal
