Senior AI Data Engineer

About Fora

Hi, we’re Fora. We’re reimagining the travel advisor industry with fresh eyes, and building a travel agency that is modern, inclusive, tech-enabled and well, cool.

Fora is a next-generation travel platform that, through training and tools, enables anyone to become a travel agent. Fora's mission is to empower 100,000 entrepreneurs to transform their passion for travel into revenue, and we’re doing it by curating the most incredible experiences for travelers. 

Fora was founded in 2021 by travel entrepreneurs Henley Vazquez, Jake Peters and Evan Frank – who shared one big idea. Since then, we’ve grown to a team of 35+ full-time employees, with an office headquarters in Tribeca, New York City.

We are fortunate to be backed by an incredible group of investors and are looking for more talented and mission-driven individuals to join our team.

About the Role

 Fora is seeking a product-oriented Senior AI Data Engineer to serve as a technical authority for existing and new AI products. As Fora’s first AI Data Engineer, you will have a critical role in shaping our data infrastructure for all of our products, leveraging it by building new concepts and building new AI products, pushing the boundaries of what’s possible.

Reporting to the VP of Engineering, and working closely with Product, Growth, and Engineering teams, you will help us turn novel ideas into AI solutions that make our users 10x more productive.

This role is perfect for someone who thrives on solving challenging problems and is eager to develop production-grade AI products that drive real impact for our customers. 

What You’ll Do

• Lead development, scaling, monitoring, and maintenance of all AI products
• Partner with Product to impact sizing, scoping, and prioritization
• Build MVPs quickly to prove or disprove product hypotheses in days
• Build custom data pipelines that support all AI product initiatives that are scalable and easy to maintain (Airflow, AirByte)
• Collaborate closely with the Product, Growth, and Engineering teams
• Continually refine existing AI products - leverage new models, new tools, and new prompting techniques
• Manage and oversee the evals process

Qualifications

• 6+ years of software engineering
• 3+ years of ML experience
• Operate with high energy, good at frequent context switching and making progress on multiple projects at once
• Experience building AI prototypes or shipped AI products to users (send us examples that we can try)
• Expertise building production-grade RAG & agentic pipelines (hybrid search, evals, etc.)
• Extreme ownership and ruthless prioritization
• Experience building and optimizing data pipelines (AirFlow, AirByte, et.c)
• Experience using Pinecone (or other vector DBs), Llama Index, Langchain
• Fluent in Python and Typescript (experience using Cursor is a huge plus)
• Clear understanding of when to apply various prompt engineering techniques: COT, emotional reasoning, few-shot, etc.
• Strong communication skills, with the ability to initiate and drive projects proactively and accurately

Compensation

• Salary Range: $150-185k + equity

We pride ourselves on our great benefits, including: 

• Unlimited PTO
• Health Insurance (including an option completely covered by Fora HQ)
• Dental & Vision Insurance
• One Medical + ClassPass Memberships
• 401k plan
• Commuter Benefits
• Supplemental Life Insurance
• Stock Options

This role is based in New York City with a hybrid WFH & office schedule (Monday, Tuesday and Thursday are our Tribeca in-office days, with flexibility for Wednesday and Friday at your preference).