Senior AI Platform Engineer

Role Description

Placer.ai is building out the AI agentic and context layer we use to run the company internally — the tooling, integrations, agents, and automation that make every team faster. This is the connective tissue of how an AI-native company operates, and we're building it from the ground up.

As a Senior AI Platform Engineer, you'll help build that platform end to end — the agents, connectors, automation, and infrastructure that let the entire company unlock major productivity gains. You'll be designing and shipping AI that takes real work off people's plates, turning manual processes into automated ones, and building the systems that let teams do their best work faster.

Developing our use of Claude and Databricks — currently the backbone of that internal AI stack — is a key part of the mandate. Every one of our 500+ team members already uses Claude and BI in Databricks for analysis, automation, and research, and demand for deeper integrations is growing faster than our R&D team can deliver. You'll be tasked with driving these capabilities and impact to the next level — from surface-level usage to genuinely agentic, high-leverage workflows embedded across the business.

This is a hybrid role: part platform engineer, part internal-facing integration lead. You'll report to the COO and partner across AI Operations, R&D, Data Science, GTM, and other teams, owning the path from integration request to production-grade system. You'll also help build the triage and review process so the broader org can self-serve safely.

If you want to build the AI backbone of a fast-moving company — and see your work adopted by hundreds of people within days rather than quarters — this is that role.

Responsibilities

• Agent Design & Orchestration
  • Architect agents that don't just answer questions but do work — chaining reasoning, tool calls, and decision-making into reliable multi-step workflows.
• The Tool & Context Layer (incl. MCP Servers)
  • Give agents secure, governed access to the systems and data they need to act.
• MCP Server Development
  • Design, build, and deploy MCP servers across two tracks: external SaaS integrations and fully custom MCPs for Placer's internal tools.
• Auth Infrastructure
  • Build the OAuth and credential management layer that makes connector auth work securely at scale.
• Connector Standards
  • Work with R&D Architecture to define what "production-ready" means for a Placer MCP server.
• Integration Triage & Prioritization
  • Triage incoming connector requests and bug reports from across the company.
• Plugin & Skill Development
  • Build and maintain Cowork plugins and Claude skills that extend Claude's capabilities for specific Placer workflows.
• Data Platform Engineering (Databricks / Internal BI)
  • Take ownership of Placer's internal BI environment on Databricks.
• Usage Tracking & Insights
  • Build and maintain tooling to track how internal AI tools are being used across the company.
• Platform Infrastructure & Cost Optimization
  • Optimize compute, storage, and networking across the internal AI platform for both performance and cost efficiency.
• Security & Compliance
  • Implement security best practices for AI platforms.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of backend engineering experience
• Prior experience with MCP servers, LLM tool use, or AI agent frameworks
• Prior experience in data engineering or analytics tooling
• Solid understanding of REST APIs, OAuth 2.0, and credential management
• Experience building and deploying services to Kubernetes or equivalent container infrastructure
• Familiarity with Databricks or similar DW/DLs is a plus
• Strong communication skills
• Comfortable navigating competing priorities across R&D Architecture and business teams

Requirements

• Demonstrated use of AI tools to work more efficiently
• Comfort integrating generative AI into day-to-day workflows

Benefits

• Join a rocketship! We are pioneers of a new market that we are creating
• Take a central and critical role at Placer.ai
• Work with, and learn from, top-notch talent
• Competitive salary
• Excellent benefits
• Fully remote