AI Systems Engineer at AppLovin in Palo Alto, CA

Summary: AppLovin makes technologies that help businesses of every size connect to their ideal customers. The role involves building a layered AI intelligence system, where the engineer will own specific layers of the system and iterate on them based on real-world failures. Responsibilities: - You will own one or more layers of our AI system, from design through production, and iterate on them based on real-world failures - You will be matched to one of these layer areas based on your background and interest: Context engine: design and operate the RAG pipeline, memory architecture, MCP tool integrations, and prompt library that give the system company-specific knowledge at inference time Execution loop: build the action-observe-act cycle, tool integrations, state management, and logging infrastructure that let the system pursue multi-step goals Verification layer: design the checker model, confidence scoring, and human escalation logic that prevents the system from committing to bad outputs Required Qualifications: - 1–3 years of experience building real systems that use LLMs — not just calling an API, but designing context, handling failures, and shipping to users - Strong software engineering fundamentals: you write clean, testable code and you think about what happens when things break - Genuine curiosity about how LLMs behave: you have noticed patterns in how models succeed and fail, and you have opinions about why - Ability to move quickly and iterate: we are building in a new space and the path forward involves learning from production Preferred Qualifications: - Experience with vector databases, embedding models, or retrieval systems - Familiarity with agentic frameworks: LangChain, LlamaIndex, AutoGen, or similar - Experience designing prompts systematically — treating prompt design as an engineering discipline Required Skills: Large Language Models (LLMs), Software Engineering Fundamentals, Context Design for LLMs, Failure Handling in AI Systems, Vector Databases, Embedding Models, Retrieval Systems, Agentic Frameworks, Prompt Engineering, Curiosity, move quickly, iterate Benefits: Health Insurance: Medical, Dental, Vision, Life, Disability, Retirement Benefits: 401(k) Retirement Plan, Paid Time Off: Unlimited Discretionary Time Off, Paid Holidays: 10 paid holidays per year, Paid Sick Leave: 80 hours per year