Senior AI/ML Engineer

Job Description

<h3>Job Description</h3><p>Job Description<p>Salary: 160,000 - 200,000 CAD<br /><p> Ready to help reshape a $26B industry and build the future of branded merch?</p><p>commonsku is revolutionizing the promotional products industry. Our platform empowers branded merch distributors to work smarter managing projects, building quotes, placing orders, and collaborating with clients and suppliers seamlessly through the power of the Connected Workflow.</p><p>Were a remote-first, community-driven team obsessed with elevating our customers, their clients, and the broader industry. Our values Community First, Ten Steps Ahead, Fast Forward, and Delightful Work guide us. We believe you can innovate, push forward, and do more, while also sharing a laugh, supporting your colleagues, and having a life outside of work.</p><p>If youre energized by ambitious work, creative collaboration, and helping to build something great, youll want to keep reading.</p><p><br /></p><p> About the Role: AI/ML Engineer</p><p>Were growing - and were hiring our first AI/ML Engineer to join our Engineering team! In this role, youll help us develop AI-powered features and infrastructure within the commonsku platform that improve how our customers search, analyze, and act on their data with the goal of supercharging their workflow and making their work more delightful! <br><br>This role is ideal for someone who brings deep hands-on experience in applied machine learning - especially in areas like LLMs, RAG pipelines, and generative AI - and enjoys building useful, elegant features for real-world users. Weve been actively building POCs for a MCP-powered chat interface that gives distributors real-time insights into their data, and experimenting with generative image tools that let customers instantly visualize and customize products. Youll work closely with our Product, Design, and Engineering teams to take these POCs from customer validation to production and continue to innovate on new concepts and ideas.</p><p>Youll collaborate closely with teammates across Engineering, Product, and Design, elevate the AI knowledge of the entire Engineering team, contribute to a high-trust environment, and play a direct role in shaping the future of the industry.</p><p><br /></p><p> About You</p><p>Youre not just looking for a job youre looking for a place to do your best work. You bring:</p><ul><li>A community mindset You see customers as partners and coworkers as collaborators. You lift others up, always follow through on your commitments, and thrive in a team that does the same. (Community First)</li><li>Momentum and ownership You act with optimism, take initiative, and turn ideas into results. You move fast and bring others with you. (Fast Forward)</li><li>Vision and boldness You dont just react you anticipate. You think big, challenge the status quo, and push the work (and the industry) forward. (Ten Steps Ahead)</li><li>Joy in the craft You care deeply about what you build and how it makes people feel. You bring thoughtfulness, transparency, and a sparkling sense of humour to the table. (Delightful Work)</li></ul><p><br /></p><p> About The Technology</p><p>We are in the midst of modernizing our technology and infrastructure to support our growing business and user base. Our current stack involves PHP, Python, and React. Our data is stored in MySQL (RDS) and infrastructure is in AWS. We are migrating to an architecture that uses Aurora, ECS Fargate with docker based container deployment and setting up a data warehouse in Snowflake. Our current AI features and POCs are built using OpenAI, Claude, and other API based solutions for image generation.</p><p><br><br></p><p> What Youll Do</p><ul><li>Design, implement, and ship AI features that power intelligent recommendations, predictive analytics, and agent-assisted workflows.</li><li>Influence both the modernization of our legacy stack and the architecture of next-generation AI tools.</li><li>Collaborate with a team that includes engineers, Product Manager and Engineering manager to build proof of concepts to validate ideas.</li><li>Evaluate third-party AI tools, models, and platforms (e.g., OpenAI, Hugging Face, Amazon Bedrock, Claude) to identify the best-fit solutions for commonskus needs.</li><li>Once ideas are validated, lead architecture and integration of AI systems into the platform in ways that are scalable, performant, and maintainable.</li><li>Write clean, maintainable, well-tested code and model strong development practices.</li><li>Mentor other engineers by sharing ML/AI expertise through pairing, feedback, and technical reviews.</li><li>Help define best practices for ML development, testing, observability, and monitoring.</li><li>Participate in team ceremonies, design reviews, and technical discussions with clarity and curiosity.</li><li>Champion customer impact in technical decision-making using data and feedback to guide prioritization and tradeoffs.</li><li>Be part of an established scale-up environment where your technical decisions shape the roadmap and your work drives visible change across an industry.</li></ul><p><br /></p><p> What You Bring</p><p>Some of the qualities that help you thrive in this role:</p><ul><li>5+ years of professional software development experience, with at least 2+ years focused on applied AI/ML development in production systems.</li><li>Deep experience with Python, particularly for building and deploying ML/AI-powered applications.</li><li>Experience building solutions with modern ML platforms and techniques such as:<ul><li>Large Language Models (LLMs)</li><li>Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) pipelines</li><li>Generative AI applications</li></ul></li><li>Experience working with cloud infrastructure and tooling for ML (e.g., AWS Bedrock, LangChain, Arize, etc.).</li><li>Strong understanding of model evaluation, data pipelines, and API design.</li><li>Comfort with evaluating tradeoffs between build vs. buy and balancing technical depth with product needs.</li><li>Proven ability to mentor others and share knowledge constructively.</li><li>Curious, collaborative, and energized by building impactful solutions that customers love.</li><li>And familiarity with commonskus core technologies (PHP, React) is a plus!</li></ul><p><br /></p><p> Compensation & Perks</p><p>We believe in fair, transparent compensation. Starting salary for this role is $160,000$200,000 CAD, depending on previous experience and skillset. New hires are expected to come in at the midpoint of this range. However, if this role sounds perfect for you and your expectations are outside of this range, we encourage you to apply and let us know in your application about your ideal package. If we agree that its a good fit, we will have open discussion around whats possible.</p><p>Plus:</p><ul><li>Remote-first culture (with plenty of excellent in-person experiences sprinkled in)</li><li>Company-wide closure between December 25th and January 1st</li><li>Health and dental benefits, including a $1,000 healthcare spending account</li><li>RRSP/TFSA contributions up to $3,000 a year (no employee contribution required!)</li><li>Twice-yearly company wide summits (we call it HQ and youll love it)</li><li>A delightful team of smart people who are good at what they do</li></ul><p><br /></p><p> Location</p><p>This role is open to candidates eligible to work in Canada, with the exception of Quebec (were not set up to operate there yet dsol!).</p><p>Were remote-first, but if youre based in Toronto, even better. Thats where we were founded and where we maintain our HQ today!</p><p><br /></p><p> A Bit More About Us</p><p>commonsku supports hundreds of promotional products distributors and suppliers with technology that drive efficiency, growth, and connection. Our skummunity (commonsku + community = skummunity, get it?) is powered by events, education, and shared knowledge and is core to who we are.</p><p>Weve grown by being for promo by promo and now, were scaling our impact to elevating an entire industry. Wed love your help doing it.</p><p><br /></p><p> A Note About AI</p><p>We use AI every day at commonsku to be faster and better. If you use AI tools to help you draft your resume or cover letter, thats totally fine just make sure what you submit reflects you. We want to hear your authentic voice, not ChatGPTs.</p><p><br /></p><p> How to Apply</p><p>If this role feels like a fit, apply now at <span >https://commonsku.com/careers!</span></p><p>We try our level best to review and respond to every application we receive. So, once youve applied, wait to hear from a member of our People team with an update. If it looks like a good fit, expect a phone interview as the first step.</p><p>By the way, you dont need to meet 100% of the requirements we value potential, learning, and diversity of thought. Tell us why you&#39;re excited, and lets chat.</p><p><br /></p><p> commonsku is an Equal Opportunity Employer</p><p>Were committed to building a diverse team that reflects the skummunity we serve. We welcome applicants of all backgrounds, experiences, and identities.</p></p></p>