Staff Engineer / AI Builder - Vancouver
Robots and Pencils2 days ago
Vancouver, CanadaStaff+
Base Salary
$166k - $228k/yr
Responsibilities
- Design and build single- and multi-agent workflows with reasoning loops, tool/function calling, orchestration, and MCP-based tools.
- Build RAG pipelines covering chunking, embeddings, vector search, re-ranking, and knowledge-source refresh handling.
- Integrate AWS Bedrock and Agent Core, write production system prompts, and implement LLM evaluation and observability.
- Build backend and serverless services in Python and Node.js using AWS Lambda, API Gateway, DynamoDB, and event-driven orchestration.
- Design reliability patterns including retries, backoff and jitter, circuit breakers, fallback models, and user-facing degradation handling.
- Contribute to frontend integration, deployment, monitoring, troubleshooting, debugging, and production hardening.
- Lead architecture discussions, mentor engineers, establish engineering standards, and own features and releases end-to-end.
- Partner with product, design, and delivery leads across global teams to scope and ship client features.
Requirements
- 6+ years of professional software engineering experience, including meaningful production experience shipping GenAI/LLM-powered systems.
- Hands-on expertise in agentic AI, including reasoning loops, tool/function calling, and single- and multi-agent orchestration.
- Practical RAG expertise with chunking, embeddings, vector databases, cosine similarity search, and re-ranking.
- Experience building LLM evaluation and observability systems using golden datasets, LLM-as-judge, RAGAS or comparable metrics, and tracing tools.
- Strong production prompt engineering skills involving structured role framing, output constraints, and few-shot design.
- Hands-on experience with AWS Bedrock, Agent Core, Lambda, DynamoDB single-table design, S3, SQS, EventBridge, and Step Functions.
- Strong Python and Node.js skills, including full-stack application and RESTful API development.
- Experience with LLM reliability patterns, containerization with Docker, and cloud-native deployment.
- Ability to own ambiguous integration-heavy problems, explain technical trade-offs, and work across teams.
- Legally authorized to work in Canada and eligible to secure immediate U.S. non-immigrant work authorization, such as TN status under USMCA.
- Helpful qualifications include direct Amazon Bedrock Agent Core experience, regulated-domain experience, familiarity with Step Functions or Sequencer, and production experience with LLM observability tooling.
Benefits
- Comprehensive benefits package including paid time off, medical, dental, and vision insurance, plus a 401(k) for eligible employees.
- Vancouver-based role requiring mandatory weekly on-site client delivery in the United States three days per week.
- Employment may be conditional upon successful completion of a background check in accordance with local legislation.
Categories
About Robots and Pencils
Robots & Pencils is an applied AI engineering firm that designs, builds, and runs production AI systems and agentic co-workers for enterprise operations, with a focus on AWS. The privately held company, founded in 2009 and headquartered in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, provides consulting and implementation services spanning data readiness, cloud modernization, and AI enablement. It is an AWS Advanced Tier Services Partner with delivery teams across the U.S., Canada, Eastern Europe, and Latin America.