Principal AI Engineer

Role Description

At Rula, this role owns the applied AI and ML solutions that determine what, how, and how well AI shows up across mental healthcare. The focus isn’t on isolated prototypes, but on building production-grade AI systems that directly power patient-provider matching, clinical workflows, and patient engagement.

• Drive search ranking, relevance, and patient-provider matching.
• Oversee overarching personalization and recommendation strategies.
• Direct foundational ML platforms that support them at scale.
• Develop advanced recommendation engines and retrieval models.
• Apply NLP and generative AI to clinical workflows.
• Set technical standards for AI safety.
• Make principal decisions about machine learning in a high-stakes environment.
• Leverage applied AI to make care more accessible and effective.
• Develop and fine-tune models (e.g., Learning-to-Rank, embeddings, recommendation algorithms, and LLMs).
• Design product-facing AI architectures and core ML infrastructure.
• Unblock complex engineering problems.
• Act as a technical multiplier for engineers across product surfaces.
• Ship applied AI features that improve match quality and user experience.
• Build scalable, durable AI foundations for future development.
• Shape how applied ML responsibly becomes part of everyday mental healthcare.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of software engineering experience.
• 7+ years of experience designing and scaling distributed systems.
• 5+ years building and deploying production-grade ML applications.
• 5+ years of deep, hands-on experience with search, ranking, relevance, or recommendation engines.
• 5+ years of strong programming experience in Python and at least one backend language (preferably TypeScript, Java, or Go).
• 2+ years of experience building AI-powered products using foundation models (OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini).
• Strong track record with traditional search/retrieval infrastructure (e.g., Elasticsearch, OpenSearch) and modern vector databases (e.g., Pinecone, Weaviate, FAISS, Milvus).
• 3+ years of experience with MLOps, data pipelines, and rigorous evaluation systems.

Requirements

• Experience architecting secure and compliant AI solutions in regulated environments (HIPAA, GDPR, etc.).
• Familiarity with human-in-the-loop systems and clinical decision support frameworks.
• Experience designing evaluation pipelines for human alignment, factual accuracy, or model interpretability.
• Contributions to open-source AI frameworks or applied research in NLP, healthcare AI, or GenAI safety.
• Experience contributing to early-stage team growth (0 → 1).
• Experience leading or mentoring engineering teams in AI, ML platform, or applied research domains.

Benefits

• 100% remote work environment.
• Working hours to support a healthy work-life balance.
• Attractive pay and benefits with full transparency of pay ranges.
• Comprehensive health benefits: Medical, dental, vision, life, disability, and FSA/HSA.
• 401(k) plan access.
• Generous time-off policies, including 2 company-wide shutdown weeks each year.
• Paid parental leave for all parents.
• Employee Assistance Program (EAP) for mental and physical health support.
• Quarterly department stipend for team-building activities.
• Community and employee resource groups for fostering a sense of belonging.
• Home office stipend for new hires and monthly internet/cell phone expense coverage.
• Wellness at Rula program with year-round initiatives and a wellness stipend.

Company Description

We believe that diversity, equity, and inclusion are fundamental to our mission of making mental healthcare work for everyone. We are dedicated to having a culture of inclusion that will support our employees in feeling safe, seen, heard, and valued.