Staff AI Engineer

Staff AI Engineer

Join the team that is building the next generation of AI-powered mental health tools. As a Staff AI Engineer, you will develop advanced multimodal (voice, text, and vision) systems that power our Mental Health AI Coach and Provider Co-pilot—pushing the boundaries of what's possible in AI while making mental health care more accessible, personalized, and effective. We're looking for a driven and curious engineer with strong fundamentals in software engineering and machine learning who is excited to apply technical expertise to real-world impact. In this role, you'll tackle cutting-edge challenges in AI/ML—from fine-tuning large language models to building robust training pipelines—and see your work directly improve the lives of those seeking care.

What You'll Do

Design, train, fine-tune, and evaluate machine learning and large language models (LLMs) creating hyper-personalized and highly effective Agentic AI Systems.

Apply context engineering and prompt engineering techniques to optimize model behavior, improve accuracy, and ensure reliability in production.

Develop rigorous evaluation standards that not only measure system performance but also establish the gold standard for efficacy, empathy, and clinical soundness in AI-powered agents.

Contribute to production-grade ML systems, including model deployment, monitoring, and optimization.

Leverage MLOps tools for experiment tracking, model management, and reproducibility.

Collaborate with cross-functional teams to integrate AI into real-world applications, including direct collaboration with clinical partners.

Proactively identify blockers, ask the right questions, and drive projects forward in ambiguous environments.

Mentor and learn within the team—sharing knowledge on ML techniques, fine-tuning and optimization strategies, and engineering practices.

What Does Success Look Like?

30 days: Ship a feature or new improvements to AI Agents to production

60 days: Lead a cross-team functionality development or propose a performance or scaling or testability improvement

90 days: Lead a system-level architectural improvement or completely new deliverable, propose a clear design, implementation, and rollout plan and execute towards the same.

Who You Are

Strong computer science and math foundations: data structures, algorithms, linear algebra, probability, optimization.

Solid understanding of machine learning fundamentals: supervised/unsupervised learning, regression/classification, reinforcement learning, loss functions, optimization methods, and neural network basics.

Proven experience fine-tuning large language models for production use.

Proficiency in Python and experience building software in production environments.

Proficiency with Deep Learning frameworks such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, Keras, JAX, etc. and ability to reason about model architectures and training processes.

Experience with production systems and MLOps—ability to design, debug, and maintain reliable software.

Demonstrated experience working with LLM/GenAI APIs and tools (e.g., OpenAI, Anthropic, Hugging Face).

Our Benefits

The anticipated salary range for this role is $180,000 - $210,000 annually. Final compensation will be determined based on a variety of factors, including relevant experience, skills, education, and past performance. In addition to base salary, this position may also be eligible for a variable bonus and equity.

As leaders in redesigning behavioral health, we walk the walk with our employees' benefits. We want the experience of working at SonderMind to accelerate people's careers and enrich their lives, so we focus on meeting SonderMinders wherever they are and supporting them in all facets of their lives and work.

Our benefits include:

• A commitment to fostering flexible hybrid work
• A generous PTO policy with a minimum of three weeks off per year
• Free therapy coverage benefits to ensure our employees have access to the care they need (must be enrolled in our medical plans to participate)
• Competitive Medical, Dental, and Vision coverage with plans to meet every need, including HSA ($1,100 company contribution) and FSA options
• Employer-paid short-term, long-term disability, life & AD&D to cover life's unexpected events. Not only that, we also cover the difference in salary for up to seven (7) weeks of short-term disability leave (after the required waiting period) should you need to use it.
• Eight weeks of paid Parental Leave (if the parent also qualifies for STD, this benefit is in addition, which allows between 8-16 weeks of paid leave)
• 401K retirement plan with 100% matching which immediately vests on up to 4% of base salary
• Travel to Denver 1x a year for annual Shift gathering
• Fourteen (14) company holidays
• Company Shutdown between Christmas and New Years
• Supplemental life insurance, pet insurance coverage, commuter benefits and more!

Application Deadline

This position will be an ongoing recruitment process and will be open until filled.

Equal Opportunity

SonderMind does not discriminate in employment opportunities or practices based on race, color, creed, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions, religion, veteran and military status, marital status, registered domestic partner status, age, national origin or ancestry, physical or mental disability, medical condition (including genetic information or characteristics), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable federal, state, or local laws.