Staff AI Engineer

Applecart is the leading technology company that C-suites rely on to reach business-critical decision makers. The most important decisions are made by the hardest people to reach and influence. Historically, C-suite leaders have lacked the tools to reach the stakeholders who matter most to their business. The C-suites of hundreds of Fortune 500 companies, major agencies, trade associations, nonprofits, and governments use Applecart to put their best content in front of business-critical decision makers and those they trust —  from policymakers and investors to CEOs, key employees, members of the media and more. Decision makers are informed by what they read, learn from advisors, hear from colleagues, and discuss with family and friends. To break through to them, you must reach them through the only channel that really moves them: those they know and trust. Applecart’s platform uses publicly available data to map billions of social relationships between nearly every American adult and enable clients to deliver content directly to decision makers and those who matter most to them. 

We are hiring a Staff AI Engineer in our New York City office.

About the Role:

The role is for the Identity team at Applecart. The team builds and maintains best in class identity data products, tying multiple systems and data sources together. As a Staff AI Engineer, you will be responsible for leading the design and deployment of our next-generation AI-powered platforms. You will shape the technical destiny of our organization, moving beyond individual features to architect the agentic ecosystems that will handle our next phase of growth. This role will report to the Director of Engineering. 

What You’ll Do:

• Lead the design of end-to-end AI solutions using foundation models, multi-agent orchestration (MAS), and RAG pipelines. Ensure that today’s technology choices support long-term scalability.
• Identify systemic risks and infrastructure bottlenecks before they impact production and ensure the reliability, availability, and scalability of data pipelines and systems through effective monitoring, alerting, and incident management.
• Mentor other engineers. Provide design feedback that teaches thinking, recommends scalable abstractions, and builds a culture of technical excellence.
• Implement efficient Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) architectures and integrate with enterprise data infrastructure.
• Stay up to date with industry advancements in GenAI and apply modern technologies and methodologies to our systems.
• Work closely with the data infrastructure team to build a unified data management and processing platform using Apache Spark, Unity Catalog, Iceberg, Dagster, etc.

Experiences and Capabilities You Bring:

• You have 8+ years of professional software development experience, especially in the fields of data engineering and AI/ML
• Deep expertise in applied AI/ML techniques (Deep Learning, NLP, GNNs), technologies (Agentic AI, RAG, Prompt/Context Engineering), and fluency in Python or a similar backend language
• You have designed and implemented scalable data processing pipelines, and understand how to store and retrieve large sets of data
• You have experience implementing various data warehousing architectures, including products like Snowflake or Databricks
• You have proven records of leading AI/ML projects, ideally RAG applications
• Proven experience with agentic frameworks (LangGraph, CrewAI, AutoGen) and modern data infrastructure (Kafka, Spark, Vector Search).
• You are an excellent verbal and written communicator. You are an expert at producing visuals for technical communication.

Preferred qualifications:

• Hands-on experiences with graph data models and graph data processing (with graph data engines such as Neo4 or PuppyGraph) is a big plus.
• You have hands-on experience in implementing the Lakehouse architecture.
• You are familiar with identity resolution and have experience building identity resolution systems.
• You have experience with backend API designing and implementation
• You have experience optimizing the end to end performance of distributed systems
• Impeccable attention to detail and superior organizational skills

This is a hybrid role. Work from home on Monday and Friday and in Applecart’s New York City office Tuesday through Thursday. 

Compensation:

Our compensation package consists of three components: (i) a base salary, (ii) annual cash bonus, and (iii) generous equity compensation.

The base salary range for this role is between $200,000 - 250,000 based on the candidates experience and skills relative to the requirements listed above. The salary range provided is exclusive of discretionary annual cash bonus and equity compensation. The salary range provided for this role is specific to candidates located in the New York City area.

A few facts about us:

• Applecart’s platform has been used by hundreds of industry-leading clients spanning Fortune 500 companies like Blackstone and Intuit, leading nonprofit organizations like the Environmental Defense Fund, and top-tier advertising and communications agencies like Teneo, FGS, Weber Shandwick, and OMD. 
• Applecart is growing quickly — over the last 4 years, we’ve increased our revenue by 10X, grown our headcount by almost 5X, and we’re cashflow positive. 
• Our senior leadership team includes two members of the Forbes 30 under 30 list for Marketing and Advertising, the former Head of Product at Moat, Oracle’s online ad measurement platform, a former senior White House advisor, early sales and talent leaders from Google and Twitter, two of the Democratic Party’s most successful pollsters and strategists, and alums of top-tier organizations like Bain & Company, Amazon and Simpson Thacher.
• Applecart raised a $100M Series C from Blackstone’s tech growth fund at the end of 2025. The company’s other investors include Bain & Company, global sports, entertainment and marketing giant Endeavor, KKR Co-Founder Henry Kravis, entrepreneur Chris Burch, a founder of Palantir, senior engineering leaders at Twitter and Yelp, former Fortune 50 and advertising agency CEOs, and a number of well-known venture capitalists. Ari Emanuel, CEO of TKO and Executive Chairman of WME, Wayne Berman, Blackstone’s Head of Global Government Affairs, and Risa Heller, CEO of HELLER, serve on our board. 
• Our work has been featured on Morning Joe on MSNBC, BloombergTV, and The Colbert Report, and in Axios, Semafor, BusinessWeek, the Associated Press, Forbes, the Washington Post, and Politico, among many others.