AI System Engineer

About Us

We are a New Zealand health technology startup developing an AI-powered clinical analysis and reporting platform for use within hospital workflows. We aim to help clinicians interpret complex medical data and produce diagnostic reports supported by clear, traceable evidence. You will work directly with researchers, engineers and clinical collaborators to translate advanced methods into practical healthcare software.

About the Role

You will build and operate AI systems that support hospital workflows and assist clinicians in diagnosis and reporting. You will take primary responsibility for AI agents and orchestration, model integration and MLOps, turning research capabilities into reliable product functionality. You will work closely with the Technical Lead, researchers and the Founding Product Engineer. This is a broad, hands-on role spanning backend development, data pipelines and production operations. Both engineers will share responsibility for deploying and maintaining the complete system.

The role will involve:

• Design and develop AI agents and orchestration workflows that connect models, tools and services to support clinical analysis and reporting.
• Work with researchers to turn algorithms and prototypes into maintainable services that can be integrated into the product.
• Build traceability and human review mechanisms that help users understand and assess AI-generated outputs.
• Evaluate AI system quality and behaviour, including limitations and failure handling, in collaboration with technical and clinical stakeholders.
• Develop backend services, APIs and data pipelines that support secure, efficient processing and product integration.
• Establish MLOps practices for model versioning, deployment, monitoring and controlled releases.
• Share responsibility for production operations, investigating issues and improving performance, reliability and maintainability.
• Contribute to architecture, code reviews and documentation, and work across the product as team priorities evolve.

What We're Looking For

Essential

• Typically 5+ years in professional software engineering, with personal responsibility for shipping and operating production systems. Equivalent demonstrated experience will be considered.
• Strong Python and backend engineering skills, including APIs, data processing, automated testing and maintainable service design.
• Practical experience integrating ML models into applications, together with hands-on development of agents, tool-calling systems or comparable dynamic orchestration.
• Ability to design evaluations for AI systems, assess their limitations and investigate failures through appropriate testing and monitoring.
• Experience with deployment and operational practices such as containers, cloud infrastructure, CI/CD, observability and version management. Equivalent tools and platforms are welcome.
• Ability to translate research prototypes into maintainable components while preserving scientific assumptions, validation requirements and data-handling constraints.
• Comfort with evolving responsibilities, on-site work in Newmarket, Auckland, and visits to collaborating hospital sites when required.
• Strong stakeholder communication and collaboration skills

Desirable

• Degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Electrical Engineering or a related discipline.
• Healthcare software, clinical workflows or sensitive-data applications.
• AI explainability, auditability or systems incorporating human review.
• LLM evaluation, agent frameworks or AI application observability.
• Model registries, reproducible inference or monitoring deployed ML systems.

Working With Us

You will shape core architecture with an experienced Technical Lead and see how your engineering decisions affect clinical review and reporting. Your scope will grow with the product and the team.

A permanent appointment may be considered after the fixed term, subject to performance, company milestones and mutual agreement. Participation in an ESOP may be considered upon permanent appointment, subject to plan approval and separately agreed allocation and vesting terms.

Location and Work Eligibility

Applicants MUST already hold New Zealand work rights permitting employment in this role. Visa sponsorship is not available. You must be based in Auckland or able to relocate before starting, for on-site work in Newmarket.

To apply, please submit your application through our website directly:

https://www.tiakitech.com/careers