Associate AI Engineer
About Figure
Figure (NASDAQ: FIGR) is transforming capital markets through blockchain. We’re proving that blockchain isn’t just theory - it’s powering real products used by hundreds of thousands of consumers and institutions.
By combining blockchain’s transparency and efficiency with AI-driven automation, we’ve reimagined how loans are originated, funded, and traded in secondary markets. From faster processing times to lower costs and reduced bias, our technology is helping borrowers, investors, and financial institutions achieve better outcomes.
Together with our 170+ partners, we’ve originated over $22 billion in home equity loans (HELOCs) on our blockchain-native platform, making Figure the largest non-bank provider of home equity financing in the U.S. Figure’s ecosystem also includes YLDS, an SEC-registered yield-bearing stablecoin that operates as a tokenized money market fund, and several other products and platforms that are reshaping consumer finance and capital markets.
We’re proud to be recognized as one of Forbes’ Most Innovative Fintech Startups in 2025 and Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies in Finance and Personal Finance.
About the Role
Figure's AI Engineering team builds and operates production AI systems that improve operational efficiency, customer experience, risk management, and decision quality.
We're hiring an Associate AI Engineer to help operate and improve our conversational AI systems while developing into a full-stack AI engineer.
Initially, approximately half of your work will focus on the technical operation of AI-powered chat, voice, and customer-support services. You will bring engineering rigor to agent workflows, API integrations, testing, analytics, knowledge retrieval, security, and production releases.
The other half will consist of hands-on projects across our broader AI stack. With coaching from senior engineers, you will build Python services, APIs, data pipelines, evaluations, and internal tools supporting production AI systems.
This role is well suited to someone who combines analytical depth with practical programming ability. You may come from software engineering, economics, another quantitative social science, data science, or a similarly rigorous field. We care more about demonstrated reasoning and engineering ability than a particular degree or conventional career path.
This is not a content-management or prompt-writing position. You will help operate conversational AI as production software: tested, measurable, secure, observable, and carefully governed.
What You'll Work On
Conversational AI Systems
Improve AI-powered chat and voice services supporting customer-service and lending workflows
Build and maintain agent workflows, API-integrated tools, guardrails, retrieval rules, and escalation paths
Review workflows for logic errors, unsafe behavior, routing conflicts, and unnecessary model context
Establish disciplined development, staging, testing, review, and production-release practices
Partner with domain experts who own customer experience, policies, and lending operations
Translate business knowledge into reliable system behavior without becoming the sole owner of that knowledge
Determine whether problems are best solved through workflow logic, deterministic code, retrieval, an LLM, or a product change
Evaluation and Analytics
Build automated tests and simulations for conversational workflows
Define and measure containment, escalation, answer quality, task completion, and customer-impact metrics
Develop tagging, monitoring, and quality-assurance systems for production conversations
Analyze failures and turn production evidence into prioritized improvements
Build pipelines that make conversational data available to analytics and reporting systems
Design controlled experiments and incremental rollouts that measure business outcomes
Full-Stack AI Engineering
Build Python services and APIs that expose AI capabilities
Develop integrations between AI systems and Figure's internal services
Build data and evaluation pipelines using Python and SQL
Contribute to internal tools and user interfaces
Learn Figure's deployment, monitoring, containerization, and CI/CD practices
Gradually own increasingly substantial production engineering projects
Security and Governance
Inventory and review conversational tools that access internal or third-party APIs
Ensure sensitive operations use deterministic validation instead of unreliable model judgment
Support appropriate handling of customer data, credentials, PII, and regulated workflows
Maintain auditability for workflow changes and production behavior
Escalate security, compliance, and reliability concerns using sound technical reasoning
What We're Looking For
Must-Haves
Strong programming fundamentals and practical Python experience
Working knowledge of SQL and structured data analysis
Ability to break ambiguous problems into testable components
Comfort reading unfamiliar code and tracing system behavior
Strong written communication and attention to detail
Interest in AI behavior, analytics, backend systems, and product workflows
A habit of validating assumptions and measuring outcomes
Ability to collaborate with engineers and nontechnical domain experts
Desire to grow into a full-stack production AI engineer
Strong Signals
Experience building an API, backend service, automation, data pipeline, or internal tool
Experience evaluating LLMs, conversational agents, or other probabilistic systems
Knowledge of experimental design, statistics, causal inference, or applied econometrics
Experience testing nondeterministic systems
Familiarity with retrieval-augmented generation, agent tools, workflow engines, or model evaluation
Ability to distinguish problems requiring deterministic logic from those suited to an LLM
Experience translating domain or policy requirements into software behavior
Nice-to-Haves
Degree or research background in economics, computer science, statistics, engineering, or another quantitative discipline
Graduate training involving empirical research and substantial programming
Experience with TypeScript or a modern frontend framework
Familiarity with cloud platforms, Docker, CI/CD, or infrastructure as code
Experience with experimentation systems, analytics platforms, or business-intelligence tools
Experience in lending, fintech, healthcare, or another regulated environment
Experience with customer-support or contact-center systems
A PhD is welcome but not required. Candidates with unconventional backgrounds are encouraged to apply if they demonstrate strong analytical reasoning and practical software-building ability.
What We're Not Looking For
Candidates interested only in prompt writing or content administration
Pure researchers who do not want to build and operate production systems
Engineers unwilling to collaborate closely with domain experts
Candidates who accept model outputs without evaluation
People who default to an LLM when deterministic code or a product change would be safer
Candidates seeking a narrowly defined role without operational responsibility
What Success Looks Like
Within your first six months, you will:
Understand Figure's conversational AI workflows and integrations
Strengthen testing, monitoring, security, and release discipline
Resolve concrete workflow reliability issues
Produce defensible reporting on conversational-system performance
Ship at least one production integration, service, or internal tool
Demonstrate increasing independence across Python, APIs, data, evaluation, and deployment
Over time, the role will shift toward broader full-stack AI engineering as the conversational systems become better governed and operational responsibilities become more distributed.
Salary
Base Compensation Range: 80K - 120K annually
25% annual bonus target, paid quarterly
Company equity in the form of RSUs
This is the compensation range for the role in the United States. Actual compensation may vary based on a candidate’s experience, skills, location, internal equity, and evolving business needs. While most offers are generally made within the middle of the range, final compensation is determined based on the factors above.
Benefits
Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage, with 100% employer-paid premiums for employees and their dependents on select plansCompany HSA, FSA, Dependent Care FSA, 401(k), and commuter benefitsEmployer-paid life and disability insurance11 observed holidays and PTO planUp to 12 weeks of paid family leaveContinuing education reimbursement
Depending on your residential location certain laws might regulate the way Figure manages applicant data. California Residents, please review our California Employee and General Workforce Privacy Notice for further information. By submitting your application, you are agreeing and acknowledging that you have read and understand the above notice.
Figure will not sponsor work visas for this position. In compliance with federal law, all persons hired will be required to verify identity and eligibility to work in the United States and to complete the required employment eligibility verification form upon hire.
#LI-SB1 #LI-Hybrid