Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. Cresta is a company focused on transforming customer experiences through AI technology. The Staff Machine Learning Engineer will lead high-impact AI initiatives, focusing on building next-generation agentic AI systems and improving the reliability and performance of LLM-powered agents.
Responsibilities
- Define and lead the technical vision for Cresta’s next-generation Agentic AI systems, including Agentic Assist and enterprise AI Agents
- Architect scalable, production-grade LLM systems that integrate reasoning, retrieval, planning, tool use, and real-time decision-making into cohesive, intelligent workflows
- Design and evolve multi-agent orchestration frameworks that combine RAG, structured knowledge, domain-adapted models, and automated actions
- Establish best practices for building robust, reliable, and cost-efficient LLM-powered systems in high-scale production environments
- Own evaluation strategy for complex, non-deterministic AI systems, including offline benchmarking, online experimentation, LLM-as-a-judge methodologies, and systematic failure analysis
- Proactively identify and mitigate agent failure modes such as hallucinations, tool misuse, retrieval errors, prompt brittleness, context drift, and multi-step reasoning breakdowns
- Define measurable quality standards (accuracy, faithfulness, task completion, latency, cost efficiency, robustness) and drive continuous system improvement
- Influence cross-team architecture decisions across ML, backend, and product engineering to ensure seamless integration of AI capabilities
- Mentor senior engineers, raise the technical bar, and contribute to long-term AI strategy and roadmap planning
- Translate cutting-edge research advances into practical, high-impact production systems
Skills
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Mathematics, or a related field; Master's or Ph.D. strongly preferred
- 7+ years of experience building and deploying machine learning systems in production, including deep hands-on experience with LLMs at scale
- Demonstrated leadership in architecting complex AI systems, particularly agentic or multi-step LLM workflows
- Deep expertise in transformer-based models, embeddings, retrieval systems, and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) pipelines
- Experience designing evaluation frameworks for LLM systems beyond single-turn prompts, including robustness testing and production monitoring
- Strong systems thinking: ability to design for scalability, latency constraints, cost efficiency, security, and long-term maintainability
- Extensive experience with modern ML frameworks (e.g., PyTorch, TensorFlow, Hugging Face) and distributed/cloud-based infrastructure
- Proven ability to influence technical direction across teams as a senior individual contributor
- A strong bias toward action — able to prototype rapidly while maintaining production rigor
Benefits
- Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage with plans to fit you and your family
- Flexible PTO to take the time you need, when you need it
- Paid parental leave for all new parents welcoming a new child
- Retirement savings plan to help you plan for the future
- Remote work setup budget to help you create a productive home office
- Monthly wellness and communication stipend to keep you connected and balanced
- In-office meal program and commuter benefits provided for onsite employees
- Equity
Company Overview
Cresta uses artificial intelligence to assist sales and service agents in the quality of customer service. It was founded in 2017, and is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, USA, with a workforce of 201-500 employees. Its website is https://www.cresta.com.Company H1B Sponsorship
Cresta has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships, with 2 in 2026, 9 in 2025, 6 in 2024, 2 in 2023, 10 in 2022, 4 in 2021, 3 in 2020. Please note that this does not guarantee sponsorship for this specific role.