Senior Applied AI Engineer

Join Inversion as a Senior Applied AI Engineer in our Playa Vista, California headquarters. This full-time, in-office role offers the opportunity to build and lead the company's internal AI infrastructure, developing intelligent systems and agent-based solutions that drive efficiency and decision-making across all teams.

About the Role

Inversion is pioneering advanced reentry systems to deliver cargo from low-Earth orbit to anywhere on Earth in under an hour. As our first dedicated applied AI engineer, you'll architect and implement the company's internal AI and agent platform strategy from inception. This is a high-ownership, cross-functional position where you'll identify critical use cases, validate technical solutions, harden prototypes, and establish how AI should operate at Inversion. You'll report to the Director of Software and work closely with teams across engineering, operations, and beyond to unlock new workflows powered by intelligent systems.

Your Responsibilities

• Architect, build, and operationalize internal AI systems and agent-driven workflows that enable teams to work more effectively.
• Manage the complete product lifecycle of applied AI tools: from problem discovery and prototyping through evaluation, launch, production monitoring, continuous improvement, and ongoing support.
• Build agent infrastructure and supporting frameworks capable of executing critical functions including data retrieval, content analysis, process automation, and development support.
• Investigate and validate technical strategies for safe, reliable agent execution and knowledge integration, including retrieval-augmented approaches, API integration, prompt engineering, and model assessment.
• Create standards and guidelines for responsible AI development and deployment at Inversion, covering testing methodologies, performance measurement, safe rollout practices, and system observability.
• Shape Inversion's long-term vision for workplace AI adoption and define technical direction as the organization's founding AI engineering resource.

Qualifications

• Proven track record developing and shipping production or pre-production AI and LLM applications.
• Hands-on expertise with current LLM development patterns including API tool use, prompt engineering, structured response formats, autonomous agents, or search-augmented systems.
• Solid software engineering skills including architecture design, quality assurance, troubleshooting, code standards, and long-term maintainability.
• Background in backend system development, web services, tool development, or automation infrastructure.
• 5+ years building and delivering production software systems in professional settings.
• Proven comfort with ill-defined challenges, evolving goals, and significant independent scope ownership.
• Capacity for occasional after-hours and weekend availability when needed.
• U.S. citizenship, permanent residency, or equivalent immigration status required to comply with ITAR regulations governing space technology.

Why Join Inversion

Inversion operates at the intersection of breakthrough space technology and urgent national security missions. You'll be building essential infrastructure that multiplies team productivity while working alongside world-class engineers solving problems that matter at global scale. As the first engineer focused on applied AI, you'll have outsized influence over technical direction and company culture. Based in Playa Vista, this role combines startup autonomy with serious backing from leading institutional investors and established partners in defense and space sectors.

Applying for This Role

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