--- title: 'Applied AI Engineer at Salient' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/applied-ai-engineer-salient-san-francisco-f3xrvzdyawaq' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-09-09' --- # Applied AI Engineer at Salient - **Company:** Salient - **Location:** San Francisco, CA - **Compensation:** $200k–$300k - **Employment:** full-time - **Work type:** onsite - **Posted:** 2026-05-20 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-09 - **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/salient/5bef27e7-17b3-4ad0-93e0-9e430409acd4 ## Job description ## ABOUT US Salient builds AI agents for regulated financial services. Our agents automate loan servicing, compliance, collections, recovery, insurance claims, and disputes for banks, captives, and specialty lenders. We are: - Backed by a16z and Y Combinator, with $75M raised in Series A funding - Cash flow positive and profitable, with mid eight figure ARR achieved in under two years - Already serving more than 20% of the auto lending industry - Processing millions of real customer calls and transactions every day - Fully deployed in production with major financial institutions - Actively expanding into new financial services segments - Building together in person in San Francisco We are deeply integrated with our customers, own the full technology stack, and move quickly to bring modern AI into regulated industries where precision, reliability, and performance matter. ## ABOUT THE ROLE We’re looking for a Member of Technical Staff to help build the speech and language models behind Salient’s production voice agents. You’ll work on challenging problems in speech and language modeling. Many of these problems look solved in academic benchmarks, but remain deeply unsolved in real-world production. This is a high-ownership role on a small, elite team. You’ll own core parts of the system end to end, and everything you do will have direct revenue impact. ## WHAT YOU’LL DO - Build and improve production speech models and systems with the ultimate goal of improving real-time conversational quality. - Post-train LLMs for voice agents used for consumer finance. - Develop evals, harnesses, and monitoring systems. - Work across models, data, infrastructure, and product to improve end-to-end agent quality. - Own major technical areas with significant autonomy, from problem definition to production deployment. ## WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR - Strong engineering fundamentals and ability to build reliable production systems. - Experience with speech modeling, or LLM post-training. - Familiarity with areas such as ASR, TTS, turn detection, speech enhancement, multilingual speech, LLM post-training, or model evaluation. - Ability to diagnose messy real-world model failures and turn them into practical improvements. - High ownership, strong execution speed, and comfort operating in ambiguous technical areas. - Prior experience in speech modeling and LLM post-training is ideal, but not required. We care more about slope, intensity, and technical ability than exact background. - Exceptional engineers who are highly driven and excited to work on hard AI problems are encouraged to apply! ## WHY JOIN - Work on the full stack of production voice AI. - Own and lead core product areas on a small, high-caliber team. - Ship improvements that affect millions of live conversations. - Tackle real-world speech problems that are still unsolved outside of benchmarks. At Salient, we’re building at the edge of AI - fast, focused, and with real ownership. Sprints and major launches move quickly, and we look for people who are energized by that pace. Our team typically works around 60 hours per week, beginning at 8:00 AM, with four days spent collaborating in person at our San Francisco office. We also offer a benefits package designed to support our full-time employees: medical, dental, and vision coverage, a generous 401(k), and catered lunches. By applying, you acknowledge that your personal information will be processed in accordance with our Privacy Policy https://www.trysalient.com/legal/privacy-policy. ## About Salient ## Company Overview - **One-liner**: Salient builds AI-native loan servicing agents that automate collections, disputes, and loss mitigation for US consumer lenders. - **Entity Type**: Private (Funded: $75M total raised) - **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, United States - **Founded**: 2023 - **Founders**: Mukund Tibrewala (CEO) and Arijit Malik (CTO) ## Core Business - **Primary industry**: Consumer lending / Fintech / AI workflow automation - **Target customers**: B2B – banks, credit unions, auto lenders, and fintechs operating in US consumer lending. - **Mission**: To lower the cost of credit for every American by building AI that is reliable, auditable, and compliant. ## Products & Services - **Taylor 2.0**: AI agent for inbound and outbound collections calls with native FDCPA, TCPA, and CFPB compliance. Handles end-to-end conversations, negotiations, and payment promises. - **Marshall 1.4**: Agent for GAP claim automation and appraisal-clause deadline management. - **Flyn 1.2**: Agent for dispute and chargeback resolution. All products are designed with borrower-level memory, cross-channel context, and exam-ready audit trails. ## Market Standing - **Valuation**: ~$500M (as of late 2025, per Y Combinator; conflicting reports may exist) - **Key Metrics**: - Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR): $25M (per Y Combinator, 2025) - LinkedIn reports $4.7M annual revenue (likely earlier or GAAP vs ARR difference) - Daily active users: agents touch more than 1.5 million Americans every day - **Total Funding**: $75M across seed and Series A - **Notable Investors/Partners**: Andreessen Horowitz (led $60M Series A), Matrix Partners, Y Combinator; selected by JPMorgan Chase for Hall of Innovation - **Growth Signals**: Team grew 185% YoY to ~46 employees; 8 open roles as of mid-2025; expanded law repository and LMS-level compliance features in 2026 releases. ## Competitive Advantages - **Compliance-first design**: Built from the ground up inside lender operations to meet CFPB, state-level, and supervisory expectations. - **Borrower-level memory**: Every interaction updates a persistent profile across promises, hardships, disputes, and escalation history. - **Embedded origin**: Co-developed with some of the largest US consumer lenders – not a generic AI applied post-hoc. - **Audit-ready**: Full logging, exam-ready reporting, and rule-level control out of the box. ## Strategic Focus - Deepening product coverage for auto lending and expanding into more consumer lending verticals (credit cards, personal loans). - Strengthening compliance capabilities with expanded law repositories and LMS-level control. - Scaling deployments across existing launch partners and acquiring new bank/credit union clients. ## Why Work Here - **Culture**: Early-stage startup environment with deep domain focus; founded by former Tesla/Goldman Sachs (Mukund) and Airtable/Dropbox (Arijit). Emphasis on building inside the problem. - **Location**: San Francisco headquarters; roles listed as SF with a hybrid/office presence expected. - **Team**: ~46 people with heavy engineering/technical composition (46% of workforce). High autonomy and ownership. - **Perks/Notable**: Backed by top-tier VCs; opportunity to shape AI infrastructure for a highly regulated industry; roles span engineering, product, and operations. ## Sources 1. [trysalient.com](https://www.trysalient.com/) 2. [trysalient.com/company](https://www.trysalient.com/company) 3. [ycombinator.com/companies/salient](https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/salient) 4. [linkedin.com/company/salientai](https://www.linkedin.com/company/salientai) ## Other roles at Salient - [Founder's Office](https://feeny.ai/job/founder-s-office-salient-san-francisco-v1nwwbzwvs4s) — San Francisco, CA - [Founding Product Designer](https://feeny.ai/job/founding-product-designer-salient-san-francisco-y809xaazpm2f) — San Francisco, CA - [Strategic Finance & Operations](https://feeny.ai/job/strategic-finance-operations-salient-san-francisco-4fk4vpbm69tm) — San Francisco, CA - [Full Stack Engineer, Front-End](https://feeny.ai/job/full-stack-engineer-front-end-salient-san-francisco-5ggw0z7ychdt) — San Francisco, CA - [AI Deployment Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/ai-deployment-lead-salient-san-francisco-4myp38c0xp1b) — San Francisco, CA - [Technical Recruiter](https://feeny.ai/job/technical-recruiter-salient-san-francisco-0kpdk6ged8e8) — San Francisco, CA - [Software Engineer, Product](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-product-salient-san-francisco-9g5sfd1t4zp5) — San Francisco, CA - [Infrastructure Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/infrastructure-engineer-salient-san-francisco-tqh62zx42aed) — San Francisco, CA - [Head of People](https://feeny.ai/job/head-of-people-salient-san-francisco-25521af0w19p) — San Francisco, CA - [Sr Software Engineer, Product](https://feeny.ai/job/sr-software-engineer-product-salient-san-francisco-zda7ajc64zpt) — San Francisco, CA