Senior AI Engineer (24 months fixed-term)

ABOUT KHAN ACADEMY

Khan Academy is a nonprofit with the mission to deliver a free, world-class education to anyone, anywhere. Our proven learning platform offers free, high-quality supplemental learning content and practice that cover Pre-K - 12th grade and early college core academic subjects, focusing on math and science. We have over 181 million registered learners globally and are committed to improving learning outcomes for students worldwide, focusing on learners in historically under-resourced communities.

OUR COMMUNITY 

Our students, teachers, and parents come from all walks of life, and so do we. Our team includes people from academia, traditional/non-traditional education, big tech companies, and tiny startups. We hire great people from diverse backgrounds and experiences because it makes our company stronger. We value diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging as necessary to achieve our mission and impact the communities we serve. We know that transforming education starts in-house with learning about ourselves and our colleagues. We strive to be world-class in investing in our people and commit to developing you as a professional.

THE ROLE

As a Senior AI Engineer (24 months fixed-term), you’ll take responsibility for integrating AI into Khan Academy product features, collaborating with our Product Management, Design, Engineering, and Content teams to develop tools and processes that ensure the consistency and quality of AI implementations. 

You will:

• Collaborate with designers, product managers, and engineers to build AI-driven features that support education use cases.
• Develop test datasets and evaluation criteria for the evaluation of AI outputs
• Measure, maintain, and improve AI output quality over time via experimentation with prompting, scaffolding, and implementation architectures

WHAT YOU BRING 

• Technical Proficiency: You have experience working in software engineering, data science, or related technical roles. Experience with python and/or go preferred.
• Applied AI experience: You understand what generative AI models are good at and how to elicit the best performance from them. You have a knack for structured, analytical thought, and you’re detail-oriented with high standards for quality. You understand techniques—including prompt chaining, RAG, tool-calling, and fine-tuning—for guiding generative AI outputs in service of a robust and performant enterprise product.
• Strong technical project management skills: Our Senior Software Engineers often lead projects that involve multiple engineers
• Testing and quality assurance: You’re committed to a careful, iterative, data-driven approach for optimization, innovation,  and continuous experimentation. You have experience developing evaluation data sets for benchmarking model fit and task-specific performance.
• Data Analysis: You know how to analyze interaction data, both programmatically and manually, to identify actionable insights to optimize the user experience. You have experience using data to inform strategic decisions.
• Research: You keep informed about developments in AI and take an active interest in emerging research and industry trends, and you understand the implications for our product’s competitiveness and performance.
• Communication: Your strong communication skills help you collaborate effectively with cross-functional teams, including educators, developers, and designers. You can explain technical concepts and create high quality documentation.
• Collaboration: You have a history of working cross-functionally to achieve shared success in organization-wide goals and projects.
• Growth mindset: You’re adaptable to a fast-paced environment, and open to learning new tools and tech.
• Ethical Considerations and Bias Mitigation: You’re aware of ethical considerations in AI and machine learning, especially in an educational context, and are familiar with strategies for mitigating bias.
• Domain understanding: You have a solid understanding of education technology, curriculum development, and learning science.

WHAT YOU BRING

• 5+ years of transferrable technical experience (e.g., software engineering, ML engineering, data science)
• 2+ years applying AI, machine learning, and natural language processing concepts to real world problems.
• 1+ years experience related to education (ed tech, instructional design, learning science research, teaching, etc.)
• A high level familiarity with the architecture and operation of large language models, and a nuanced understanding of their capabilities and limitations.
• Empathy for learners around the world. You love learning and are excited about helping others learn to love learning. You’re motivated to learn new things and share what you learn with the world.
• Proven cross-cultural competency skills demonstrating self-awareness, awareness of other, and the ability to adopt inclusive perspectives, attitudes, and behaviors to drive inclusion and belonging throughout the organization.

PERKS AND BENEFITS

We may be a non-profit, but we reward our talented team extremely well! We offer:

• Competitive salaries
• Ample paid time off as needed – Your well-being is a priority.
• Remote-first culture - that caters to your time zone, with open flexibility as needed, at times
• Generous parental leave
• An exceptional team that trusts you and gives you the freedom to do your best
• The chance to put your talents towards a deeply meaningful mission and the opportunity to work on high-impact products that are already defining the future of education
• Opportunities to connect through affinity, ally, and social groups
• And we offer all those other typical benefits as well: 401(k) + 4% matching & comprehensive insurance, including medical, dental, vision, and life

At Khan Academy we are committed to fair and equitable compensation practices, the well-being of our employees, and our Khan community. This belief is why we have built out a robust Total Rewards package that includes competitive base salaries, and extensive benefits and perks to support physical, mental, and financial well-being.

The target salary range for this position is $137,871 - $147,000 / $186,306 - $198,450 CAD. The pay range for this position is a general guideline only. The salary offered will depend on internal pay equity and the candidate’s relevant skills, experience, qualifications, and job market data. Additional incentives are provided as part of the complete total rewards package in addition to comprehensive medical and other benefits.

MORE ABOUT US

• Sal’s TED talk from 2011
• Sal’s TED talk from 2015
• Sal's TED talk from 2023
• Our team:  http://www.khanacademy.org/about/the-team

OUR COMPANY VALUES

Live & breathe learners

We deeply understand and empathize with our users. We leverage user insights, research, and experience to build content, products, services, and experiences that our users trust and love. Our success is defined by the success of our learners and educators.

Take a stand

As a company, we have conviction in our aspirational point of view of how education will evolve. The work we do is in service to moving towards that point of view. However, we also listen, learn and flex in the face of new data, and commit to evolving this point of view as the industry and our users evolve.

Embrace diverse perspectives

We are a diverse community. We seek out and embrace a diversity of voices, perspectives and life experiences leading to stronger, more inclusive teams and better outcomes. As individuals, we are committed to bringing up tough topics and leaning into different points of view with curiosity. We actively listen, learn and collaborate to gain a shared understanding. When a decision is made, we commit to moving forward as a united team.

Work responsibly and sustainably

We understand that achieving our audacious mission is a marathon, so we set realistic timelines and we focus on delivery that also links to the bigger picture. As a non-profit, we are supported by the generosity of donors as well as strategic partners, and understand our responsibility to our finite resources. We spend every dollar as though it were our own. We are responsible for the impact we have on the world and to each other. We ensure our team and company stay healthy and financially sustainable.

Bring out the joy

We are committed to making learning a joyful process. This informs what we build for our users and the culture we co-create with our teammates, partners and donors.

Cultivate learning mindset

We believe in the power of growth for learners and for ourselves. We constantly learn and teach to improve our offerings, ourselves, and our organization. We learn from our mistakes and aren’t afraid to fail. We don't let past failures or successes stop us from taking future bold action and achieving our goals.

Deliver wow

We insist on high standards and deliver delightful, effective end-to-end experiences that our users can rely on. We choose to focus on fewer things — each of which aligns to our ambitious vision — so we can deliver high-quality experiences that accelerate positive measurable learning with our strategic partners.

We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, or Veteran status. We value diversity, equity, and inclusion, and we encourage candidates from historically underrepresented groups to apply.

As part of this commitment, Khan Academy will ensure that persons with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodations for the hiring process. If reasonable accommodation is needed, please contact careers@khanacademy.org