AI / Machine Learning Engineer

Today, 67% of students and 82% of low-income students can't read at grade level by the end of third grade. That's when students are supposed to go from learning to read to reading to learn. It's America's number one education crisis and we know how to fix it. Ignite Reading delivers one-to-one virtual tutoring that teaches every student the foundational skills they need to become a confident, fluent reader. We pair students who need extra support with expert reading tutors who provide daily, 15-minute, Science of Reading-based instruction that rapidly closes their decoding gaps. We focus on the foundational reading skills—phonics, phonemic awareness, and sight words—kids need to master so they can decode a sentence. Students in Ignite Reading's program achieve over 2 weeks of reading skills growth per week of instruction, and notably all students achieve the same outstanding results including students with IEPs, multilingual learners, students of color and those receiving free or reduced-price lunch. Ignite Reading is a mission-driven public benefit corporation. We believe we can do well for our team members and shareholders while we solve one of the nation's biggest challenges. We believe we will be more successful with a diverse team and are seeking candidates who have lived experience related to social justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion. Your Role As an AI / Machine Learning Engineer, you will contribute to the design and implementation of burgeoning AI/ML infrastructure and operations, paving the way for innovative solutions that scale with our growing organization. As an early member of this functional team, you will play a key role in defining how AI/ML drives value across our tutoring platform, enhancing student learning and operational efficiencies. You will sit directly on a cross-functional scrum team tasked with delivering features and functionality that drive student outcomes, with a lens towards applied AI/ML technologies. Ignite Reading uses technology to enable the delivery of our virtual tutoring services, maximize the learning of our students, and accelerate our ability to scale. To this end, the product is focused on four key technology needs: 1. A tutoring logistics platform, which enables us to schedule, conduct and report on our tutoring sessions. 2. A tutor workflow platform, which lets tutors know exactly what to teach each student every day. 3. An extended learning application, which enables students to practice what they learn in their tutoring sessions after they return to the classroom or go home at night. 4. An AI/ML implementation, which will enable us to ensure lesson fidelity and intelligently serve content based on a student's individual needs as we scale. Key Responsibilities - Implementation & Integration: Integrate pre-trained models and third-party AI APIs (OpenAI, Anthropic) into educational platforms to build features like intelligent tutoring systems and automated assessment tools. - MLOps & Production Systems: Set up monitoring, deployment pipelines, and cost management for AI services in production while optimizing API usage and system performance. - Data Processing: Work with robust data pipelines to ingest, clean, and transform student and content data while meeting rigorous compliance and security standards. - AI Feature Engineering: Develop recommendation engines, adaptive learning pathways, and automated quality assurance solutions using analytics and content-based approaches. - System Architecture & Scalability: Design scalable microservices architectures for AI components that can handle varying student loads and support horizontal scaling. - API Development & Maintenance: Build and maintain internal APIs that serve AI functionality to frontend applications with proper documentation and versioning. - Cross-functional Support: Collaborate with product managers, data scientists and other related teams to translate educational requirements into technical solutions and measure AI feature effectiveness. - Documentation: Document services, APIs, models, algorithms, and processes, ensuring knowledge is shared across the team and company. Qualifications - 3+ years of experience in AI/ML engineering or data science roles. - Proficiency in Python, Ruby, or other programming languages commonly used in AI/ML implementations or applications. - Experience utilizing APIs that surface models as a service, and/or experience experimenting with LLMs, generative AI, or related technologies. - Product focused - you have the ability to understand the needs of our users and translate those needs into prioritized product features and the technical capabilities needed to power them. - Quality focused - you maintain high standards of code and lead thoughtful application design to ensure platform performance, uptime, and scale, and have excellent debugging and optimization skills. - An orientation to collaboration - you are excited to work as part of a cross-functional agile team to deliver AI/ML-powered solutions. - You have excellent communication skills with the ability to explain complex concepts to both technical and non-technical stakeholders. - You have strong analytical and problem-solving skills, as well as a distinct attention to detail and a commitment to delivering high-quality work. - You are self-motivated with a passion for leveraging AI/ML for social good as well as a continuous learning mindset. - Ability to work in a fast-paced, dynamic environment and manage multiple projects simultaneously.

Ignite Reading is a mission-driven public benefit corporation. We believe we can do well for our team members and shareholders while we solve one of the nation's biggest challenges. We believe we will be more successful with a diverse team and are seeking candidates who have lived experience related to social justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion.