AI Applied Engineer - San Francisco

About Plaud Inc.

Plaud is building the world's most trusted AI work companion for professionals to elevate productivity and performance through note-taking solutions, loved by over 1,500,000 users worldwide since 2023. With a mission to amplify human intelligence, Plaud is building the next-generation intelligence infrastructure and interfaces to capture, extract, and utilize what you say, hear, see, and think.

Plaud Inc. is a Delaware-incorporated, San Francisco-based company pushing the boundary of human–AI intelligence through a hardware–software combination. With ISO 27001, ISO 27701, GDPR, SOC 2, HIPAA, and EN 18031 compliance, Plaud is committed to the highest standards of data security and privacy protection.

To learn more about Plaud, please visit https://www.plaud.ai and follow along on Instagram, X, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube

Why You Should Join Us

Plaud is building the next generation intelligence infrastructure and interfaces to capture, extract, and utilize intelligence from what people say, hear, see, and think.

• Plaud is a bootstrapped, skyrocketing, profitable company with a $250M revenue run rate achieved in just three years.

• Define the next-gen paradigm for human-AI interaction.

• Gain exposure to cutting-edge AI for Pro tools and play a direct role in our global expansion.

• Work with passionate teammates who value innovation, collaboration, and customer success.

• Grow your career in a culture that champions continuous learning and fast career development.

• Market-competitive compensation, global exposure, and a vibrant, creativity-fueled work atmosphere.

What you will do

• Own the end-to-end design and delivery of AI-first workflows for complex knowledge work (e.g. preparation, collaboration, and follow-up around key meetings and decisions).

• Design and iterate multi-step LLM / agent systems, including intent understanding, planning, tool/skill invocation, memory usage, and refinement loops.

• Build and evolve reusable AI capabilities (skills, prompts, templates, evaluation pipelines) that can be composed into multiple product experiences.

• Define clear success metrics for AI behavior, run experiments, and use data and examples from real interactions to continuously improve reliability and usefulness.

• Work closely with Engineering and ML to make pragmatic trade-offs and ship fast, while keeping a strong bar for product quality and user experience.

Skills, qualifications and experience we look for

• Solid experience building and shipping AI or ML-powered products end to end, ideally as a Product Manager, AI Engineer, or similar hybrid role.

• Strong working understanding of LLM-based systems: prompting, tool calling / APIs, retrieval / context construction, evaluation of model outputs, and common failure modes.

• Ability to translate messy user needs into clear specs and flows, including example prompts, edge cases, and expected behaviors for the AI system.

• Comfortable working with data and real interaction logs to debug, compare variants, and make decisions (not afraid of digging into dashboards or raw examples).

• Excellent written and verbal communication in English, and proven ability to work with engineers and researchers on technically deep topics.

• Hands-on experience designing or implementing agent-like workflows (multi-step plans, calling multiple tools/skills, self-correction or refinement).

• Experience shipping AI assistants, copilots, or productivity tools that are used frequently in users’ daily workflows.

• Ability to read basic code or notebooks (e.g. Python) well enough to collaborate closely with ML/engineering and reason about system behavior.

• Track record of working in fast-moving, high-ambiguity environments, taking ideas from 0 → 1 with tight feedback loops.

What we offer

• Meaningful Ownership An Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) that gives a real stake in Plaud’s long-term success.

• High-Impact Environment Work in a fast-moving, product-driven environment where your ideas directly shape the future of AI productivity.

• Comprehensive Health & Retirement Benefits Top-tier medical, dental, and vision insurance for employees and dependents, supported by a generous employer subsidy, plus a 401(k) retirement plan with company matching for full-time employees.

• Time Off & Workplace Benefits Unlimited PTO, plus 13 paid holidays, 12 weeks of fully paid parental leave for all parents, a hybrid work model with a minimum of three in-office days per week, and access to high-quality office snacks, drinks, and equipment.

• Cutting-Edge AI Tools for Productivity Access to best-in-class AI tools, including Cursor, GPT models, Gemini, Claude, and other frontier AI systems to maximize engineering and execution efficiency.

• Best-in-Class Equipment Choice of top-spec laptops, high-performance workstation setups, and cutting-edge Plaud devices for all new hires.

• Team & Culture Annual company offsites, team events, and a culture that values craftsmanship, ownership, and velocity.