AI Engineer - AI Foundation & Tooling, Ads Platform

About Netflix: At Netflix, our mission is to entertain the world. Together, we are writing the next episode—pushing the boundaries of storytelling, building global fandoms, and making the unimaginable a reality. We are a dream team obsessed with the uncomfortable excitement of discovering what happens when you merge creativity, intuition, and cutting-edge technology. Launched in November 2022, our ad-supported subscription tier unlocks exceptional choices for members globally while creating a compelling, highly targeted ecosystem for corporate advertisers.

Position Overview

We are seeking a high-caliber Staff AI Engineer (Level 6) to join us as the first dedicated applied AI systems architect for our Ads Platform Engineering team. This is a rare, high-impact greenfield opportunity. You won’t be maintaining legacy applications—you will design, build, and deploy our foundational AI developer productivity infrastructure and agentic workflows from scratch. Operating at the intersection of infrastructure scalability and applied AI, your core mission is to construct the foundational ecosystem that transforms how our core developers write, test, and validate code across our hyper-scaling cloud footprint.

Key Responsibilities

• Agentic Workflow Architecture: Design and implement full-lifecycle agentic workflows supporting automated code generation, test script auto-creation, pull request (PR) pre-reviews, and continuous deployment validations.
• Centralized Context Engineering: Architect and scale a high-signal, centralized context layer to give autonomous agents grounded, team-specific software repository knowledge.
• Multi-Agent Orchestration: Program complex multi-agent synchronization frameworks where parallel AI agents handle functional implementation, structural testing, and developer documentation as coordinated workflows.
• Operational AI Automation: Build automated operational pipelines for real-time incident triage, runtime log/metric correlation parameters, deep root-cause analytics, and guided disaster resolutions.
• Developer Enablement: Stand up standardized AI development environments company-wide and drive team adoption through hands-on technical pairing sessions, workflow demonstrations, and deep architectural reviews.
• Quality & Speed Optimization: Balance code generation speed with system reliability, ensuring our expanding codebase scales without accumulating technical regressions or accountability gaps.

Required Skills & Qualifications

• 3+ years of intensive, hands-on professional focus explicitly dedicated to building and deploying applied AI systems and agentic frameworks in live production environments.
• Deep master-level command over Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) operations—including document indexing, semantic embedding strategies, high-performance retrieval pipelines, and grounding techniques.
• Proven background establishing AI infrastructure for software development lifecycles (AI coding assistants, context layer engineering, automated unit testing frameworks).
• Strong software engineering fundamentals with a record of writing production-grade, highly resilient backend systems, not just conceptual prototypes.
• Advanced software programming proficiency leveraging Python and/or JVM languages (Java, Kotlin, Scala).
• Demonstrated capacity to drive technical tooling adoption across engineering teams, establishing deep trust via technical architecture evaluations.
• Location Context: 100% remote-first working infrastructure flexibility open to qualified applied AI engineering leaders based anywhere within the United States.

Preferred Strategic Indicators (Nice to Have)

• Prior experience operating as the founding AI engineer on an engineering team, standing up advanced AI capabilities where none previously existed.
• Deep familiarity with LLM application patterns: context engineering optimization, tool use / function calling APIs, structured JSON outputs, and automated hill-climbing evaluation methodologies.
• Hand-on experience embedding AI guardrails into production CI/CD pipelines and log analysis diagnostic workflows.

What We Offer

• Annual Salary Compensation: $600,000 – $1,066,000 USD (Netflix relies on top-of-market indicators tailored to your specific background and skills. Our structure consists solely of a base annual salary with no bonuses, allowing you to choose each year how much you receive in cash versus stock options).
• Comprehensive, premium health plans and extensive mental health support infrastructure.
• Robust 401(k) retirement savings plan supported by competitive employer matching provisions.
• Inclusive family-forming benefits alongside company-sponsored life and serious injury coverage.
• Flexible time-off policy allowing salaried employees immediate entitlement to take time off as needed to recharge.