[Remote] Staff Engineer AI/ML

Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. AnswersNow is a company focused on revolutionizing autism therapy through an innovative virtual ABA therapy platform. They are seeking a Staff Engineer specializing in AI/ML to lead technical initiatives, mentor engineers, and ensure the health of the engineering organization while integrating machine learning models into their core platform.ResponsibilitiesOwn and evolve the architecture of our core platform: React frontend, Node.js/Express APIs, Postgres, and AWS ECS infrastructureDrive our JavaScript → TypeScript migration, establishing patterns, tooling, and standards the team can followDesign and extend our ETL pipeline and config-driven AI integration framework, enabling engineers to ship AI-powered features faster and more reliablyLead technical design reviews, create architecture decision records (ADRs), and ensure engineering decisions are documented and defensibleIdentify and resolve systemic technical debt — not just flagging it, but owning the plan to address itDefine and execute the technical strategy for integrating ML/AI models into our core platform, ensuring scalability, performance, and reliabilityMentor engineers across all levels — pair, review, coach, and grow the team's collective capabilityEstablish and maintain engineering standards: code quality, testing practices, observability, on-call runbooks, and incident responseServe as a technical resource and thought partner for product, clinical, and business stakeholdersHelp define the engineering hiring bar and participate in the interview processPartner with engineering leadership and product to scope, sequence, and de-risk large technical initiativesLead by example on production support — define runbooks, own post-mortems, and drive systemic fixes from incidentsWork across UI, API, DB, and infrastructure layers with genuine depth in at least twoSkills8+ years of professional software engineering experience, with at least 3 years in a senior or staff-level roleDeep expertise in JavaScript and TypeScript in a production full-stack environmentStrong command of React, Node.js/Express, and Postgres — you can reason about performance, reliability, and maintainability at each layerProven experience designing and owning distributed systems or data pipeline architectures on AWS (ECS, RDS, S3, Lambda experience valued)Track record of technical mentorship — you've made engineers around you measurably betterExcellent written and verbal communication; you can write an architecture doc, run a design review, and brief a non-technical executive in the same dayExperience working in or leading engineering at a growth-stage startup — you understand the balance between velocity and sustainabilitySignificant experience architecting and deploying production-grade ML/AI systems, including LLM integration and model lifecycle managementFamiliarity with ETL pipelines, AI/LLM integration patterns, or data-intensive systems is a strong plusExperience with healthcare or regulated data environments (HIPAA compliance, PHI handling)Familiarity with event-driven architectures, message queues, or streaming pipelinesPrior experience as an engineering manager who returned to an IC track (player-coach background welcome)Contributions to open source or engineering blog posts / conference talksBenefitsFully remote – work from anywhere in the U.S.Flexible hours with an async-friendly team cultureCompany OverviewAnswersNow is an app that revolutionized autism support by utilizing the use of technology. It was founded in 2016, and is headquartered in Richmond, Virginia, USA, with a workforce of 51-200 employees. Its website is https://getanswersnow.com.