Sr. AI Engineer

Arbital Health is a rapidly growing healthcare technology and actuarial leader that centralizes, measures, and adjudicates value-based care contracts at scale. We enable payers and providers to design, measure, and execute value-based agreements with greater transparency, efficiency, and financial predictability.
We invest in hiring high potential and humble individuals who thrive in fast-paced environments and can rapidly grow their responsibilities as we continue to accelerate our growth.
We were co-founded by Brian Overstreet and Travis May (founder & former CEO of LiveRamp and Datavant, the two biggest data companies of the last 20 years), and are backed by Transformation Capital, Valtruis and other leading investors. In our first 2 years, Arbital Health has established itself as a trusted partner for over 40 payers, providers, and other stakeholders looking to navigate the complexities of risk-based contracting.
At Arbital Health, we aim to transform the US healthcare system by accelerating the shift to value-based care (VBC) contracts by building the first AI-powered platform that enables our customers to construct, measure, and adjudicate VBC agreements. We recently launched Merlin AI , the first VBC AI assistant which makes complex contract performance data conversational, transparent, and instantly actionable.
We are looking for a visionary, hands-on Senior AI Engineer to drive product innovation by architecting, building, and scaling Merlin's next-generation conversational AI experiences. This role requires a technologist who excels at the intersection of advanced AI models, large-scale systems, and a customer-focused approach.
Is this role right for you?
Skills
If you want to make an impact on the US healthcare system, the idea of Merlin excites you, and the following matches your skills, experience, and interests:

Hands-on experience with prompt engineering, model testing, and automated evaluation techniques for conversational AI.
Development and deployment of a data-intensive product on a SaaS platform
Programming in Python and SQL
Possess a strong product mindset, prioritizing quality and end-user impact. You strive for technically sound solutions that enhance user workflows, demonstrating a talent for iterative improvement and rigorous testing
Strategic leadership role in determining the direction of platform development
We are open to remote candidates however candidates local to the SF Bay area will be given priority.
Impact

As a senior AI engineer at Arbital Health, you'll play a pivotal role in shaping the future of value-based healthcare through intelligent automation. You'll help unlock insights from complex financial, clinical, and actuarial data by:
Owning the conversational AI architecture for interacting with complex and unstructured healthcare contract and financial data, delivering real-time analytics and visualizations
Driving the evaluation and production-scale deployment of LLMs within a HIPAA-compliant environment
Dramatically reducing analytics time for strategic decision-making
Supporting thought leadership in the intersection of value-based care, healthcare finance, and artificial intelligence
Responsibilities

Lead the architecture and development of Arbital’s next-generation conversational AI
Collaborate with our cross-functional team of actuarial scientists, data scientists, data engineers, and product managers on Arbital’s AI strategy and help shape the conversational AI platform roadmap
Manage the deployment and monitoring of these AI solutions in production environments to ensure they are performing as expected and troubleshoot any issues
Ensure data accuracy, integrity, privacy, security, and compliance through automated quality control procedures
Mentor junior team members
Requirements

8+ years of experience in data-intensive, SaaS platform development projects
2+ years of experience with cutting-edge AI systems, context engineering and agentic systems ranging from tool-calling stacks to MCP-style frameworks
Hands-on experience with AI orchestration frameworks like LangChain, CrewAI, ADK, etc.
Demonstrable experience designing and building conversational AI systems that exhibit autonomous behavior, decision-making, and/or tool usage.
Experience in designing and maintaining context engineering pipelines (RAG, memory, summarization, compression, grounding) for conversations.
Proficiency in Python and common AI/ML frameworks (e.g., TensorFlow, PyTorch, Hugging Face Transformers, LangChain, LlamaIndex).
Solid understanding of MLOps principles and experience with tools for model deployment, monitoring, and CI/CD for ML.
Standing up observability for agents (traces, costs, failures, hallucinations, guardrails) and creating dashboards that guide product decisions.
Experience with Cloud ML Services like AWS Bedrock, SageMaker, and Google Vertex AI
Experience with Airflow, Databricks, and AWS or GCP
Ability to ship extremely high-caliber code and build exceptional products
Ability to perform under minimal supervision with accountability for specific objectives and work in a rapidly changing, ambiguous start-up environment
Passionate about improving and innovating
Our team works hybrid from the San Francisco Bay Area. We will prioritize candidates who can work two days per week from our San Francisco office. We will also consider highly qualified remote candidates who can travel to San Francisco for in-person collaboration several days per month.
Nice To Have's

Startup experience is highly preferred
Product development coding in R
Tools We Use

Infrastructure: AWS, GCP, Databricks, Airflow, Sigma, Datadog
AI: Vertex AI, Vanna AI, Databricks Vector Search
Core Tools: Python, R, SQL, Next.js , React, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS
IDE: Cursor, VS Code, and R Studio
Version Control: GitHub
Team Planning / Design: JIRA, Confluence, Figma, Lucid
$180,000 - $240,000 a year
This is a target salary range, compensation is based on skills, experience, and location.
Why Join Us?
We are assembling a team of creative, talented visionaries seeking to build a new technology that will change healthcare. You will be able to learn, build, and scale our team and technology in a collaborative, creative culture that values every team member.
We Offer

Generous equity grants of ISO stock options
We offer an exceptional benefits package with high employer-paid contributions for health, dental, and vision insurance
4% 401(k) match
Flexible PTO, a weeklong winter shutdown, and 10 holidays each year
Occasional travel required - Quarterly team offsites
The opportunity to build a critical software platform that accelerates the American healthcare system's transition to value-based care