Staff Software Engineer, Applied AI

Valence • San Francisco, CA

2d • Hybrid

About The Position

As a founding Applied AI Engineer at Valence, you will help define and build the future of AI-powered leadership coaching, working directly with our Head of AI and cross-functional product and engineering teams. You’ll be at the intersection of generative AI research and product execution - helping design, build, and refine intelligent systems that deliver context-aware, personalized coaching at enterprise scale. This role is purposefully broad and adaptable: we don’t expect any one candidate to check every technical box, but we do look for engineers who are eager to learn, iterate rapidly, and contribute meaningfully across a range of challenges from model behavior to production systems.
You’ll tackle real-world AI problems - from transforming enterprise data into actionable context, to optimizing conversational experiences, to shaping how AI engages with users in meaningful and responsible ways. Your work will directly impact how our platform performs in high-stakes enterprise deployments and how leaders around the world grow through AI-facilitated insights.

Requirements

• 8+ years of experience in software engineering, AI/ML, data-intensive systems, AI/ML development (ideally including a Master's or Ph.D. in Computer Science, ML, Data Science, or a related field).
• Familiarity with language systems (e.g., NLP, conversational interfaces, IR) and comfort reasoning about model behavior, context, and evaluation - both theoretical and practical knowledge.
• Experience with core data science tools such as NumPy, scikit-learn, Pandas, PySpark, plus SQL and common visualization tools (e.g., matplotlib, Seaborn, Plotly, or BI tools) to explore and communicate insights.
• Comfortable developing and deploying services in cloud environments (AWS, GCP, Azure) and working with containerization/orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes).
• Strong software engineering skills, including writing maintainable code, debugging distributed systems, and collaborating in cross-functional teams.
• Eagerness to tackle unfamiliar problems, learn new technologies, and contribute to shaping our platform and culture.
• Ability to explain technical ideas clearly and work effectively with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Nice To Haves

• experience with ML lifecycle tools (e.g., MLflow, Weights & Biases)
• familiarity with Cloud ML services
• past work building generative AI applications

Responsibilities

• Architect and build enterprise-grade AI and conversational systems that power coaching workflows and user experiences.
• Develop, evaluate, and refine LLM-based components - balancing performance, scalability, and reliability in real use cases.
• Integrate and manage diverse sources of structured and unstructured data to improve contextual understanding and output quality.
• Partner closely with product, engineering, and design to translate user needs into impactful technical solutions.
• Rapidly prototype and iterate on systems that span backend services, data pipelines, and frontend interactions as needed.
• Build tooling, tests, and automation to support reliable model deployment, observability, and continuous improvement.
• Help streamline data and science workflows, enabling fast experimentation and data-driven decisions.

Benefits

• Competitive salary including base + bonuses
• Comprehensive health coverage (medical, dental, vision) from day one
• Generous PTO, company-wide R&R shutdowns, and paid parental leave
• Retirement plan support for US and global employees
• Equity
• Meaningful ownership in a venture-backed company at a growth inflection point
• Top-up grants as we scale and you deliver exceptional performance — your compensation grows alongside your impact

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior