Applied AI Engineer

Tolan is an Embodied Companion: a cute, friendly AI alien that you talk with naturally, like a friend. They have unique preferences and personalities, and over time they form memories about you, your friendship, and your life.

Tolan is built by an experienced team with a lot of history together. We previously founded Even, acquired for $300m in 2022. We love to work hard, with a high degree of autonomy and ownership. We work together in-person in downtown SF.

Tolan’s Applied AI Team writes and manages all prompts that power the product. Your colleagues on the Applied AI Team include behavioral researchers, science fiction writers, game designers, and operators with experience scaling systems to serve millions of users.

The role

Applied AI Engineers are responsible for crafting, deploying, and evaluating the prompts that shape the Tolans. They work closely with design and engineering to develop new features and tune/improve existing ones. A typical day will involve creative writing, AI-assisted prompt development/deployment, and testing via both vibes and evals.

Your Background

The best candidates for this role have a blend of technical and creative experience. You might be a writer who has built side projects with AI, or an engineer who writes fiction in their spare time.

Whatever your background, the role requires a high degree of autonomy, creativity, and drive. For this reason, former founders and early employees of venture backed startups tend to be a particularly good fit. 

In evaluating candidates, we place a premium on publicly shared work. The best candidates have probably shared both their writing and their technical work online, even if that writing is a side project or the technical work was vibecoded.

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If you think you may be a fit to join us, please email evidence of great work and leadership to hiring@portola.ai

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