AI Engineer (Early-Stage Commerce Software)
ScrumAID
San Francisco, CA · Posted November 1, 2026
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Where San Francisco, CA ranks
Where San Francisco, CA placed in our monthly rankings, month by month. Each month stays online at its own address.
November 2026
- #1Best cities for security jobs316 openings · of 20
- #1Best cities for technology jobs7,178 openings · of 100
- #1Best cities for financial services pay after cost of living$173k · of 33
- #1Best cities for entry-level jobs that want AI skills35% · of 100
- #1Best cities for entry-level jobs that want AI skills in the West Coast35% · of 54
- #1Cities with the most jobs that do not need a four-year degree in the West Coast902 jobs · of 47
Rankings about data & analytics jobs
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- Best cities for data and analytics pay after cost of living #1 Foster ($232k)
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- Employers with the most data and analytics jobs #1 Amazon (711 roles)
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Pay compared with the market
This listing does not state pay. Across 35 open ai engineer listings that state pay, the middle half runs $140,000 to $226,500 and the median is $176,000.
Listed pay is what employers advertise, not what people are paid.
How AI is used in this kind of work
Among computer and information research scientists, AI is already used for a large share of the tasks. Measured exposure for computer and information research scientists: 34% (high).
Share of this job’s tasks that AI is already used for at work, from real usage. It is not a forecast of job loss, and a low number means no use seen yet. Source: Anthropic Economic Index.
Skills this job asks for
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About the job
A very young startup building software for online merchants needs one of its first engineers to take charge of the AI portion of what the company sells. The job is hands-on production work for paying customers rather than research, and early architectural calls will shape the company for years.
Scope
Run complete AI systems from prompting and retrieval through tool use, agent orchestration and selective fine-tuning
Create evaluation tooling ahead of each feature so model changes are measured before they reach customers
Bring latency and spend down to levels that hold up under real merchant volume
Examine fuzzy product problems and judge whether the root cause lies in the model, the data or the interface
Release to production every week and watch how changes behave in the real world
Ideal background
Two to four years building production LLM systems, with an AI/ML product already in the hands of real users
Strong hands-on Python for AI services; the stack also includes TypeScript, React and Node
Experience building evaluation systems that caught regressions
Time at a fast-growing, venture-backed startup or a company known for a rigorous engineering bar
Computer science degree
Nice to have: commerce or marketplace exposure, fine-tuning experience, public open-source work
On-site in the San Francisco Bay Area. Visa sponsorship is not available.