Sr. AI Engineer (24 months fixed-term)

Khan Academy • Mountain View, CA

5d • Remote

About The Position

As a Senior AI Engineer, you’ll take responsibility for integrating AI into Khan Academy product features, collaborating with our Product Management, Design, Engineering, and Content teams to develop tools and processes that ensure the consistency and quality of AI implementations.

Requirements

• Technical Proficiency: You have experience working in software engineering, data science, or related technical roles. Experience with python and/or go preferred.
• Applied AI experience: You understand what generative AI models are good at and how to elicit the best performance from them. You have a knack for structured, analytical thought, and you’re detail-oriented with high standards for quality. You understand techniques—including prompt chaining, RAG, tool-calling, and fine-tuning—for guiding generative AI outputs in service of a robust and performant enterprise product.
• Strong technical project management skills: our Senior Software Engineers often lead projects that involve multiple engineers.
• Testing and quality assurance: You’re committed to a careful, iterative, data-driven approach for optimization, innovation, and continuous experimentation. You have experience developing evaluation data sets for benchmarking model fit and task-specific performance.
• Data Analysis: You know how to analyze interaction data, both programmatically and manually, to identify actionable insights to optimize the user experience. You have experience using data to inform strategic decisions.
• Research: You keep informed about developments in AI and take an active interest in emerging research and industry trends, and you understand the implications for our product’s competitiveness and performance.
• Communication: Your strong communication skills help you collaborate effectively with cross-functional teams, including educators, developers, and designers. You can explain technical concepts and create high quality documentation.
• Collaboration: You have a history of working cross-functionally to achieve shared success in organization-wide goals and projects.
• Growth mindset: You’re adaptable to a fast-paced environment, and open to learning new tools and tech.
• Ethical Considerations and Bias Mitigation: You’re aware of ethical considerations in AI and machine learning, especially in an educational context, and are familiar with strategies for mitigating bias.
• Domain understanding: You have a solid understanding of education technology, curriculum development, and learning science.
• 5+ years of transferrable technical experience (e.g., software engineering, ML engineering, data science)
• 2+ years applying AI, machine learning, and natural language processing concepts to real world problems.
• 1+ years experience related to education (ed tech, instructional design, learning science research, teaching, etc.)
• A high level familiarity with the architecture and operation of large language models, and a nuanced understanding of their capabilities and limitations.
• Motivated by the Khan Academy mission “to provide a free world-class education for anyone, anywhere."
• Proven cross-cultural competency skills demonstrating self-awareness, awareness of other, and the ability to adopt inclusive perspectives, attitudes, and behaviors to drive inclusion and belonging throughout the organization.

Responsibilities

• Collaborate with designers, product managers, and engineers to build AI-driven features that support education use cases
• Develop test datasets and evaluation criteria for the evaluation of AI outputs
• Measure, maintain, and improve AI output quality over time via experimentation with prompting, scaffolding, and implementation architectures

Benefits

• Competitive salaries
• Ample paid time off as needed – Your well-being is a priority
• 8 pre-scheduled Wellness Days in 2026 occurring on a Monday or a Friday for a 3-day weekend boost
• Remote-first culture - that caters to your time zone, with open flexibility as needed, at times
• Generous parental leave
• An exceptional team that trusts you and gives you the freedom to do your best
• The chance to put your talents towards a deeply meaningful mission and the opportunity to work on high-impact products that are already defining the future of education
• Opportunities to connect through affinity, ally, and social groups
• 401(k) + 4% matching & comprehensive insurance, including medical, dental, vision, and life

What This Job Offers

• Career Level: Mid Level
• Education Level: No Education Listed
• Number of Employees: 11-50 employees