AI Native Engineer

About Legalist

Legal investment firm

Tech

Technology is the core of our business. We have developed sourcing and diligencing tools that allow us to underwrite thousands of lawsuits at scale. The platform is powered by GCP and AWS, and is composed of a central PostgreSQL database, a django application, and many micro-services. Our goal is to improve the current platform by introducing new technologies and methodologies to our development process. Our engineers work closely with our business and underwriting teams to improve their ability to service our clients. Candidates should expect to take ownership over their own projects and to have the latitude and ability to solve complex issues, take ownership of them and execute and deliver. Our extremely diverse team spans legal, finance, engineering, and operations and works on the cutting edge of the legal industry.

The role

### **Intro description:**Legalist is a tech-enabled alternative asset manager that uses proprietary data-driven origination to invest in uncorrelated legal and government-payment assets. Founded out of Y Combinator in 2016, Legalist manages over $1.7 billion for endowments, foundations, and family offices._Summary_ Legalist is looking for an AI Native Engineer to join our team and work directly with our Co-founder to build AI-powered products and workflows. This is a hands-on, execution-focused role for someone who has a track record of building across a variety of projects and is already using AI as a core part of how they develop software. Our ideal candidate operates in a fast-paced environment and can take a business problem or idea, figure out the technical approach, build a solution, and iterate quickly.  _Responsibilities_- Design and build new AI products, tools, and features- Build applications using LLMs and foundation model APIs- Develop AI agents and multi-step workflows that connect models with internal and external systems- Build integrations with third-party APIs, internal data sources, and existing software- Design and implement RAG pipelines, including retrieval, embeddings, vector search, and context management- Build backend services and APIs to support AI applications- Prototype new ideas quickly, thoroughly test them, and turn successful prototypes into production-ready tools- Evaluate models and approaches based on accuracy, latency, cost, and reliability- Build evaluations and testing processes to measure and improve model outputs- Stay current on new models, developer tools, frameworks, and AI capabilities _Qualifications _- 3+ years of professional software development experience - Hands-on experience building applications with LLM APIs such as OpenAI, Anthropic, or similar - Experience building AI agents, tool-calling workflows, or other agentic systems- Strong understanding of APIs, backend development, databases, and cloud infrastructure- Experience taking software from prototype through production- Experience working with financial, legal, or other complex datasets- Familiarity with prompt design, context management, model evaluation, and techniques for improving LLM reliability- Experience working across a variety of technical projects, ideally for multiple companies or clients- Comfortable working independently and figuring things out without a detailed set of requirements- Local to New York City and excited about the opportunity to have regular in-person working sessions