Applied AI Engineer

Government technology has failed citizens, public servants, and service members for decades.

Kaizen powers America’s application layer. We replace the legacy systems federal agencies run on with modern software, built with craft. The ticketing platform a resident uses to visit a presidential library. The marketplace DoW uses for counter-drone procurement to protect lives and critical infrastructure. The system a Veteran uses to access benefits. We build systems of record, of national consequence. Our AI-native modules and harness allow us to do so in weeks and months, not years.

This year, our revenue has grown 35x. Next year, our software will serve over 100 million Americans across dozens of federal agencies.

Founded in 2022 and based in New York City and DC, Kaizen has raised $35 million from NEA, a16z, Accel, 776, and Carpenter Capital.

The Role

We built an internal tool called Bidbuddy. Before it existed, someone on our team spent eight hours a week scraping procurement sites, pulling RFPs by hand, and reading them to figure out which ones were worth chasing. Now one system does the scraping and the first pass of analysis. Those eight hours went back to the people doing the actual work of winning.

That's one tool. We need many more, and most of them don't exist yet. Kaizen is about 40 people supporting software that reaches 40 million residents across 50+ agencies in 17 states, and the only way that math holds is if the company runs on tools instead of hours.

This role owns that. You'll go department by department, find where the time goes, and build the thing that takes it back. Sometimes that's an internal app. Sometimes it's an automation nobody notices. Sometimes it's teaching a team to use AI properly, which is often the highest leverage thing available. Then you roll it out and stay on it until people actually use it. We already have the list, and it's long.

Location

This is a hybrid role based out of our New York. Candidates must reside in New York or be able to commute to New York City to work out of our office at least four times a week (Monday - Thursday).

What You'll Do

• Own internal tools end to end, from the hallway conversation that surfaces the problem through architecture, build, rollout, and the week two fixes.

• Build AI powered internal systems in the mold of Bidbuddy: document parsing and analysis, agentic workflows, automated research and routing, and tooling that turns hours of manual work into minutes.

• Work directly with leads across Proposals, Customer Ops, Sales, Design, and Engineering to find where the time is going, and translate half-formed asks into something worth building.

• Drive AI enablement across the company. Every person at Kaizen should know how to get the most out of these tools.

• Support the external analytics layer inside Kaizen's platform, so customers have clear, actionable data at their fingertips

• Back up the deployment team during an implementation

What You'll Bring

• 2 to 5 years of engineering, data, or applied AI experience, or work that makes the years irrelevant. Slope matters more than seniority

• Something you built end to end that a team still uses today: an internal application, an automation, a tool that changed how people work. Not a prototype, not a demo

• Genuine fluency with AI tools. You've shipped with them, not just explored them, and you can name where they failed you and how you caught it

• Strong SQL and enough data modeling to work in an existing warehouse and ship a model when the job calls for it

• The ability to take a vague problem from a non-technical stakeholder and come back with the right scope, not the requested one

• Low ego, high output. You do the unglamorous rollout work because that's what makes the build matter

Strong Candidates May Also...

• Have built internal tooling at a company where the hard part was getting hundreds of people to change how they work

• Come out of forward deployed or solutions engineering at an AI or developer tools company, where the job was making software work inside someone else's mess

• Know N8N, Zapier, or similar deeply enough to have a view on when not to reach for them

• Have built in government, healthcare, or another environment where getting it wrong has consequences

What Kaizen Offers

Health & Insurance

• 100% coverage across the board: medical through Oxford/United (Gold and Platinum PPO plans), dental through Guardian PPO, and vision through Beam — all fully covered for employees, with 100% coverage for dependents.

• $100,000 in fully paid life insurance. FSA and Dependent Care FSA.

• One Medical membership, on us — same-day primary care, 24/7 virtual visits, and offices all over the city.

• Fertility and family-building support through Carrot.

• 401(k) through Guideline, with a 2% company match.

Family & Time Off

• 16 weeks of fully paid parental leave for birthing parents. 10 weeks fully paid for non-birthing parents.

• Unlimited PTO, with a two-week minimum (we mean it when we say take time off!)

• Closed for all federal holidays.

• Company-wide winter break the week of Christmas.

• Company offsites throughout the year.

Office & Remote Setup

• Up to $750 one-time home office or desk setup stipend for NYC-based employees. $500 for remote employees.

• $50/month commuter benefit (company contribution).

• Expensed lunch while in the office.

• Dinner and Uber rides home will be expensed if you choose to work in the office past 7pm.

• Company-provided laptop of your choice.

Wellness

• NYC employees: Fully covered gym membership at Grindhouse — right across the street from our office at 47 W 17th St (and in Williamsburg). A $225/month value, on us.

• Non-NYC employees: $100 per month, dedicated to gym / physical fitness reimbursement.

Stipends

• $100/month utility stipend.

• $250/quarter home cleaning stipend

• $500/year professional development.

• $250/year recreation.

• $300/quarter pet care stipend.