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Salary: USD 250,000 - 300,000 / annual
Via is building the technology backbone for modern public transportation systems globally. The company is launching an incubator-style team (AI Labs) operating like a startup within the organization to expand beyond transit into new domains with AI-powered solutions.
As a Staff AI Engineer, you'll be at the ground floor of this new initiative with rare autonomy and direct access to leadership. You'll own the full lifecycle of AI product development—from problem framing and data pipeline design through deployment and iteration in live environments.
Key responsibilities include:
- Build and ship production-grade AI products end-to-end, taking ownership across the entire stack
- Work in a forward-deployed manner with city partners to understand problems deeply and iterate quickly on scalable agentic solutions
- Lead technical scoping workshops, directly interfacing with city leaders to solve challenging local problems using agentic workflows
- Contribute to a varied roadmap involving data consolidation, predictive modeling, real-time decision-making, and LLM-powered experiences
- Collaborate with product, data science, and operations teams to identify and prioritize high-impact AI opportunities
- Write clean, scalable backend code powering AI-driven features—designing APIs, managing data flows, and ensuring reliable performance at scale
- Help shape the technical culture of AI Labs from inception, contributing to how the team builds, reviews, ships, and iterates
- Stay at the frontier of AI development and bring new ideas, tools, and approaches to the team proactively
You'll work in a fast-moving, ambiguous environment with a blank canvas to experiment boldly and move quickly, backed by a company already at scale.
REQUIREMENTS:
- 10+ years of hands-on experience building full-stack applications with a track record of owning features end-to-end (not isolated model or research work)
- 3+ years working with AI tools and/or building AI-powered products
- Deep expertise across the AI stack: LLMs, predictive modeling, and data infrastructure required to support them in real-world environments
- Strong core engineering skills: comfortable designing scalable APIs, working with distributed systems, and writing clean, maintainable, production-grade code
- Energized by ambiguity and early-stage environments; able to take ownership without everything being defined
- Strong cross-functional communication skills and intellectual curiosity to push AI boundaries
- Comfortable working directly with users and customers; willing to travel for on-site collaboration
