Principal AI Engineer

Get AI-powered advice on this job and more exclusive features. At Forum AI, we bring world-leading experts—renowned academics, seasoned journalists, industry leaders—into the AI development process to tackle high-stakes use cases like news and mental health where trusted expert judgment is needed. We've built sophisticated 'expert-in-the-loop' AI systems that efficiently scale the time and judgment of elite experts to help labs evaluate and improve AI models, capturing nuanced factors like tone, accuracy, helpfulness, and bias with precision. Our team : Forum AI is founded by Campbell Brown and Robbie Goldfarb. Campbell Brown is an award-winning former journalist (NBC, CNN) and former VP of News and Media Partnerships at Meta. Robbie Goldfarb is a veteran of Meta's AI Trust and Safety team with product leadership experience in AI systems and expertise in machine learning and content moderation. Our differentiation : While traditional data labelers operate massive networks training hundreds of contract annotators per project, we take a different approach. We cultivate smaller networks of elite experts and scale them surgically into areas of AI development where expert judgment is essential. We use AI to amplify these experts on high-volume tasks while deploying them directly on high-leverage, mission-critical work like benchmark creation and client recommendations. About the Role We're looking for a founding technical leader to shape the direction of our AI work and help build something meaningful. This isn't just an execution role, you'll be an executive team member helping determine what we build and how we build it. What You'll Do Shape the Strategic Direction of the Company : We're sitting on a goldmine: access to experts, institutions, and data that few others have. You'll help us figure out what to build with it: from our current work on "AI Judgment Agents" to new products and research directions that make expert oversight scalable and defensible. Lead Technical Development : Guide how we actually build these systems: What inputs should we capture from experts? How should we approach prompt engineering, fine-tuning, retrieval taxonomies, evaluation loops, and orchestration systems? You'll work closely with our product engineering team to turn expert judgment into scalable AI systems. Support External Partnerships : We're in conversation with several major AI labs about evaluation and training partnerships. You'll help prepare for and shape these discussions, refining how we position our offering and thinking strategically about where we add the most value. Who You Are Mission-driven. You care about building technology that matters, not just chasing money. Fluent in AI. You understand how the big players operate (modeling, evaluation, fine-tuning) but you also get the human side of the technology. You've worked with LLMs in production and understand the trade-offs between different approaches. Collaborative and founder-minded. You want to help shape the direction of a company, not just execute tickets. You're comfortable with ambiguity and energized by building something from the ground up. Requirements 5+ years of engineering experience with significant focus on machine learning systems Hands‑on experience building and deploying LLM‑enabled systems in production Strong understanding of prompt engineering, fine‑tuning, RAG, and evaluation methodologies Proficiency in Python and ML frameworks (PyTorch, TensorFlow, or similar) Experience with LLM APIs (OpenAI, Anthropic) and orchestration frameworks Strategic thinking ability, comfortable moving between big‑picture vision and technical implementation Strong Candidates May Also Have Experience with RLHF, constitutional AI, or other alignment techniques Background in evaluation systems or benchmark creation Experience in high‑stakes domains (healthcare, finance, journalism, education) Track record working with subject matter experts or domain specialists Experience at AI labs or companies building frontier models Seniority level Mid‑Senior level Employment type Full‑time Job function Engineering and Information Technology Industries Technology, Information and Media #J-18808-Ljbffr