Senior AI Engineer

Quandri • Vancouver, Metro Vancouver Regional District • 21h ago

We’re Quandri, our mission is to unlock the world’s insurance data so brokerages and agencies can best serve their clients. Our Renewal Intelligence Platform is designed to help brokerages save time, increase profitability, and drive better outcomes for their staff, clients, and business.

We saw 3x ARR growth last year and have plans to continue to grow both revenue and our team this year. Named one of LinkedIn’s Top Canadian Startups [https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/linkedin-top-startups-2024-15-canadian-companies-rise-linkedin-news-llihe/] in 2024, we have already made a big impact on the insurance industry. However, what matters most is making our customer’s lives better one renewal at a time. We want you to be a critical part of that journey! We’re a hybrid company, with ? of our team in Vancouver and the rest distributed. For those in Vancouver, we have an office in Gastown that we expect people to be at three days a week. We understand both the advantages of some flexibility around personal lives, and the positive interpersonal effects of in-person collaboration.

Running a profitable personal lines book of business is harder than ever for insurance brokerages. Market conditions, rising costs, talent shortages, and staffing constraints are just some of the challenges that hinder profit margins, scalability, and exceptional client service. Trusted by 5 of Canada’s top 10 brokerages, Quandri is transforming the renewal process with AI-driven automation, enabling proactive workflows and delivering data-driven insights.

Today’s renewal process is often reactive, with brokers focusing on clients who request help rather than adopting a proactive, data-driven approach. Quandri is revolutionizing renewals by offering a platform that uses AI and automation to streamline operations. This allows brokerages to retain more business, enhance client and staff experiences, reduce E&O risk, and boost sales through upselling and cross-selling.

Looking to make an impact in your next role? How about transforming an entire industry? At Quandri, we’re unlocking new frontiers in insurance. To do that, we model our culture as a crew of interstellar astronauts. As Quandronauts, we’re committed to building a company that is diverse and multi-faceted. We’ve raised venture capital from top US and Canadian investors to help us achieve our mission, and are now scaling to achieve this.

About the Role:

We're seeking an AI Engineer to lead the development of sophisticated AI applications and intelligent systems. You'll be responsible for integrating foundation models, building AI agents, implementing advanced RAG systems, and creating production-ready AI applications that deliver exceptional user experiences. This role focuses on applied AI development and building intelligent systems that solve real business problems.

What you’ll do:

Design and develop AI-first applications powered by cutting-edge foundation models.
Create and deploy intelligent agents capable of complex reasoning and task execution.
Build Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems—including advanced graph RAG implementations.
Develop conversational and multi-modal interfaces that enable natural, intelligent user experiences.
Integrate AI capabilities into existing product workflows and help define entirely new product experiences.
Implement integrations with leading foundation models such as GPT, Claude, Gemini, and more.
Design and execute fine-tuning strategies to adapt models to domain-specific use cases.
Apply advanced post-training optimization techniques like Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF), constitutional AI, and safety alignment.
Develop reusable prompt engineering frameworks and systems for automated prompt optimization.
Combine multiple models and agents into ensembles and multi-agent systems for complex problem solving.
Build and maintain vector databases and high-performance semantic search systems.
Implement state-of-the-art text embedding techniques and similarity matching workflows.
Design and build knowledge graphs and graph-based reasoning engines.
Architect multi-step reasoning pipelines and tool-using agents for dynamic workflows.
Deliver personalized, context-aware AI experiences that drive real-world impact.
Deploy AI systems into production with strong performance, availability, and reliability guarantees.
Monitor system behavior and quality with observability tooling and analytics.
Design and implement robust safety mechanisms including content filtering and model alignment controls.
Continuously optimize inference cost and latency for scalability.
Build and maintain automated evaluation systems to ensure quality, safety, and alignment in real-time.

The right person for this role will have:

3+ years of experience in AI/ML engineering, applied AI, or related fields
Strong proficiency in Python for AI application development
Solid SQL skills for data retrieval and analysis
Hands-on experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP) and their AI services
Experience with foundation models and LLM APIs (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, etc.)
Proficiency with AI frameworks (LangChain, LlamaIndex, Hugging Face, etc.)
Knowledge of vector databases (Pinecone, Milvus, pgVector) and embedding models
Core AI Competencies Experience building RAG systems and knowledge retrieval applications
Understanding of prompt engineering, few-shot learning, and in-context learning
Knowledge of LLM fine-tuning techniques (LoRA, QLoRA, full fine-tuning)
Experience with text embeddings, semantic search, and similarity matching
Familiarity with AI agent frameworks and tool-using language models
Experience with of AI safety, alignment, and responsible AI development practices

Bonus points if you have:

Master's or PhD in Computer Science, AI/ML, Mathematic, or related field
Experience with graph databases and knowledge graph construction
Knowledge of multi-modal AI (vision-language models, speech recognition)
Experience with AI model evaluation, red teaming, and safety testing
Familiarity with edge AI deployment and model optimization
Experience with conversational AI and dialogue systems
Contributions to AI research, publications, or open-source AI projects

Our guiding principles:

Customers at the core. We put the customer at the centre of all we do. At a basic level, we believe business success comes down to talking to customers and building something they want. We don’t listen to customers and just take what they say blindly, but we think critically about it and build what they need. Customers are the core of everything we do, and our business exists to serve them. We prioritize their needs over all else within the company.
Move with urgency. There are times when we need to move slowly and deliberately, but we default to acting fast and with urgency. We slow down when necessary, but this should be a deliberate choice. Businesses become more lethargic as they grow, this principle is designed to fight this fact.
Be curious. We understand the world by being curious and asking why. We aren’t satisfied with surface level understanding, and seek a deeper understanding of why things are the way they are. Don’t take someone’s word for it or the answer “because that’s how we do it.” Understand why and dig deep.
Excellence in execution. We know that what separates good from great is a high level of execution. We commit ourselves to excellence in everything that we do, from delivering an amazing product to writing a great email.
Act like an owner. We’re all owners of the business and act like it. We follow through on commitments, own our results and think long-term.
Fight for simplicity. The law of increasing functional information states that systems evolve to become more complex over time. At Quandri, we believe there is sophistication in simplicity; as such, we intentionally fight for streamlined solutions and are committed to the uncomplicated.

Compensation and Benefits

Compensation range of $145k to $200k annually
Employee stock options based on experience level
Comprehensive health benefits, including Lifestyle Spending Account
Four weeks of paid vacation per year
Work anywhere in the world for 60 days of the year

Application Process

Please submit your resume highlighting relevant experience and include a cover letter explaining your interest in the specific role
Provide links to relevant projects, GitHub repositories, or publications
Be prepared to discuss technical projects and problem-solving approaches in interviews

\n $145,000 - $200,000 a year \n

Quandri is dedicated to fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace. As an equal opportunity employer, Quandri adheres to Canadian labour laws and does not engage in discrimination based on race, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, protected veteran status, disability, age, or any other status protected under Canadian law.

Don’t let imposter syndrome stop you from applying. Great people sometimes don’t have the “right” experience. If you think that you’ll be amazing at this role then we encourage you to apply.