---
title: 'Lead AI Engineer at Sierra Studio'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/lead-ai-engineer-sierra-studio-brazil-5gccjsb0ypbe'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-10'
---

# Lead AI Engineer at Sierra Studio

- **Company:** Sierra Studio
- **Location:** Brazil
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** remote
- **Posted:** 2025-01-07
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-10
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/sierra-studio/81770149-3a94-4e22-8678-dac4a7a6d9ba

## Job description

Lead AI Engineer

🏔️ About Sierra Studio

Sierra Studio is an AI engineering studio and startup incubator – we turn our customers' ideas into reality! We're based in Los Angeles, but our teammates live all around the world. We create products across all areas of software — from web and mobile apps to cutting-edge work at the forefront of AI and large language models.

💼 About The Role

As a Lead AI Engineer, you'll lead engineering for one or more AI initiatives at Sierra. You'll architect the stack, prompt engineer LLMs to solve real world problems, and work with your teammates to ship great products you're proud of. You'll work closely with product managers, designers, and other engineers to take products from idea to production. As an early employee at a startup, you'll also be part of creating our culture!

Here's a taste of what you could do at Sierra!

- Client projects: Work with a startup founder to build the MVP of their idea
- Internal projects: Build an internal AI tool to transform our own workflows
- Hiring: Help us grow our team and interview future candidates
- Leadership: Mentor other engineers to level up our team

🔎 Who We're Looking For

We're looking for a lead engineer who has experience building great products with LLMs. Work experience, personal projects, or open source — any way you've built things counts.

If you're excited about this role but don't check every box, we'd love to see your application anyway.

## ✨ LLMs & AI

- You've shipped something real with LLMs — at work, in a project, or in study
- Experience with prompt engineering, RAG, and agentic patterns
- Experience building evals for LLM-powered products
- Growth mindset: Ability to quickly learn new skills in the AI space

🧑‍🚀 Leadership

- Experience leading the technical direction of products — formally or informally (tech lead, mentoring, owning a project end-to-end)
- Ability to work effectively with product, design, and other partners
- Ability to contribute to multiple projects at the same time
- Comfortable communicating in English, written and verbal (our clients are US-based)

💻 Software engineering

- Backend: Either Python (e.g. FastAPI) or TypeScript experience is nice to have!

🔥 Bonus skills – nice to have!

- Experience with finetuning LLMs
- Curiosity about new developments in AI
- Uses AI tools (Cursor, Claude Code, etc) to supercharge your own coding workflow

🌎 How We Work

Fully remote, with flexible hours — we care about output, not hours online. We support work-life balance for teammates at every life stage.

💖 Our culture

- Growth mindset: We look to magnify our strengths, take chances, and always learn from our mistakes.
- Supportive: We keep our egos out of the workplace and support each other when trying new things.
- Product & customer centric: We care deeply about our customers and clients and always keep their needs top of mind. We build tech to solve real problems.
- Ownership: We take initiative, even when it is "not our job." As a startup, we all wear lots of hats.

💡 Why join us?

At Sierra Studio, we believe in nurturing talent and creating good vibes at work. We seek inclusion and embrace our differences. We're all about "growth mindset", and we look to magnify our strengths, take chances, and always learn from our mistakes. We don't fit our teammates into boxes, and instead we understand that each person has their own unique set of skills that they bring to the table. If you join us, we'll embrace who you are today, and give you the space and tools to keep growing.

Salary Range: $60,000 - $100,000 annually.

Your exact compensation will be determined based on a variety of factors that reflect your individual qualifications and how they align with the needs of the role.

## About Sierra Studio

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Sierra Studio is an AI-first engineering studio and tech incubator that helps companies embed AI systems, tools, and talent to accelerate innovation while keeping people and culture at the center.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Partnership)
- **Headquarters**: Los Angeles, California, United States
- **Founded**: 2021
- **Founders**: Tim Feess (CEO)

## Core Business
- **Primary Industry**: Engineering Services / AI Development
- **Target Customers**: Startups, Enterprise, and SMBs looking to become AI-first; US-based founders seeking development teams in Brazil
- **Mission/Purpose**: Build AI solutions that accelerate progress while strengthening the people and culture behind them; help companies move from AI experimentation to AI execution.

## Products & Services
- **AI System Building**: Custom AI-first systems tuned to client data, teams, and goals – moving beyond SaaS shortcuts to real transformation.
- **AI Team Training Programs**: Training for coding and knowledge work acceleration, helping teams adopt AI-first approaches.
- **Global Talent / Hiring Services**: Connecting US-based founders with remote development teams in Brazil.
- **Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR) Program**: A program for founders to lead client projects, explore new technologies, and incubate their own ventures within Sierra’s ecosystem.
- **Embedded Engineering**: AI engineers embed directly with client teams to accelerate roadmaps while protecting IP.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly available
- **Key Metric**: Total funding not disclosed (likely bootstrapped); headcount of 25 employees (as of mid-2025) with 78.6% yearly growth
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Not publicly listed
- **Growth Signals**: Strong LinkedIn follower growth (+10.8% yearly), website traffic growth (+136.8% yearly), active hiring for multiple roles (Lead AI Engineer, Lead Full Stack Engineer, EIR), and expansion of Brazil office.

## Competitive Advantages
- **AI-first, human-first approach**: Combines technical excellence with a culture-centered methodology, ensuring solutions scale without losing team alignment.
- **Global talent pipeline**: Deep presence in Brazil allows access to high-quality engineering talent at competitive rates, while maintaining US-based leadership.
- **EIR program**: Unique incubator model that attracts entrepreneurial engineers and fosters internal venture creation.
- **Embedded model**: Unlike traditional outsourcing, engineers work side-by-side with client teams, preserving IP and cultural fit.

## Strategic Focus
- Scaling the AI-first engineering studio model across industries (Finance, Education, Insurance, Hiring, Construction, SaaS).
- Expanding the Brazil talent hub and deepening partnerships with US founders.
- Growing the EIR program to incubate more internal ventures.
- Continued emphasis on AI training and knowledge work acceleration for enterprise clients.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: Values curiosity, collaboration, and courage; described as “human-first” with a focus on impact and integrity.
- **Remote/Hybrid**: Remote-first for Brazil-based roles; US roles likely flexible (HQ in Los Angeles). Offsites bring global team together.
- **Perks & Growth**: Opportunity to work on frontier AI projects with world-class founders; career growth in a fast-growing studio; active community events (e.g., live Q&A with CEO, Global Career Summit).
- **Engineering Culture**: Engineers build AI systems from scratch, use modern tooling, and are encouraged to explore new technologies. Emphasis on “building real systems that create momentum and scale.”

## Sources
1. [sierra.studio](https://sierra.studio/)
2. [sierra.studio/careers](https://sierra.studio/careers)
3. [linkedin.com/company/sierra-studio-ss](https://www.linkedin.com/company/sierra-studio-ss)
4. [jobs.ashbyhq.com/sierra-studio](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/sierra-studio)
5. [sierra.studio/join-the-team](https://sierra.studio/join-the-team)

## Other roles at Sierra Studio

- [Full Stack Engineer (Ruby On Rails) -  Backend focused](https://feeny.ai/job/full-stack-engineer-ruby-on-rails-backend-focused-sierra-studio-brazil-3b64efe43z5g) — Brazil
- [Senior Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-engineer-sierra-studio-brazil-4gy7r7erf04a) — Brazil
- [Engineering Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/engineering-manager-sierra-studio-brazil-4m0bq5kfw976) — Brazil
- [Customer Success Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/customer-success-manager-sierra-studio-brazil-fq1pf6vdeq9q) — Brazil
- [Head of Engineering](https://feeny.ai/job/head-of-engineering-sierra-studio-brazil-za7hqsb52mc2) — Brazil
- [Founding Data & AI Engineer, Creative Engine](https://feeny.ai/job/founding-data-ai-engineer-creative-engine-sierra-studio-brazil-staz4yjwctxa) — Brazil
- [Technical Product Manager, Creative Engine](https://feeny.ai/job/technical-product-manager-creative-engine-sierra-studio-brazil-t784brw27apv) — Brazil
- [Founding Engineer (Python / Next.js)](https://feeny.ai/job/founding-engineer-python-next-js-sierra-studio-brazil-f3d2d283kyb3) — Brazil
- [Lead Full Stack Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/lead-full-stack-engineer-sierra-studio-brazil-90tjsg435sw8) — Brazil
- [Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR)](https://feeny.ai/job/entrepreneur-in-residence-eir-sierra-studio-united-states-amfpw0j9ypz8) — United States