Careers
Alien Workshop is building modern work infrastructure: a high-velocity AI workspace for content and operations—generation, editing, organization, search & retrieval, collaboration, and workflow automation.
Why Alien Workshop
We’re assembling a small team of builders who want to ship durable systems that reduce coordination cost and turn knowledge into execution. This is a craft-oriented environment: high standards, clear writing, and pragmatic engineering that holds up under real user pressure.
Build for Compounding Leverage
We focus on workflows that get faster over time: retrieval that improves, templates that standardize, and systems that reduce rework. If it doesn’t compound, it’s probably noise.
High Signal, Low Overhead
We protect attention. Clear specs, clean interfaces, and decisive execution. We avoid process for process’ sake. The goal is momentum without chaos.
Precision & Reliability
We don’t ship vibes. We ship systems: predictable behavior, debuggable primitives, measurable quality loops, and safe defaults that users can trust.
Own Outcomes
We like people who take ownership: define the problem, build the solution, measure it, and keep raising the bar. The best work here is self-directed and high accountability.
Open Roles
Below are seven core openings across platform, infrastructure, operations, and applied AI. Each role lists typical technologies and expectations so you can self-select quickly.
1) Staff Platform Engineer
Role
Own foundational platform capabilities across the product: project/workspace models, file and content pipelines, service boundaries, and performance-sensitive UI integration. You’ll work close to product strategy while maintaining a strong engineering bar—clean architecture, predictable behavior, and long-term maintainability.
You’re comfortable across a full-stack surface: desktop runtime constraints, backend services, and the glue that makes it feel like “one system.” You can design interfaces between components, enforce invariants, and build tooling that keeps iteration speed high without sacrificing correctness.
- Education: BS in CS/CE/EE or equivalent professional experience
- Experience: 7+ years engineering; shipped platform systems used daily
- Typical technologies: C++, Python, Distributed Systems, IPC patterns, REST, Postgres, Redis
- Nice-to-have: Build optimization, offline / online, indexing, sync strategies
2) Principal Infrastructure Engineer
Role
Build and scale the infrastructure layer that supports a production AI platform: deployment pipelines, service orchestration, secrets, networking, and operational maturity. You’ll design for reliability and cost efficiency, set standards for on-call health, and ensure the platform can grow without fragility.
You’ll partner with product and ML engineering to support GPU/CPU workloads, safe rollouts, incident response, and measurable SLOs. You’ll automate everything that should be automated and create the guardrails that let teams ship fast.
- Education: BS/MS in CS/CE/EE or equivalent experience; strong systems background
- Experience: 8+ years; owned infra at scale; production incident leadership
- Typical technologies: AWS/GCP, Kubernetes, Terraform, Docker, GitHub Actions, Argo, Prometheus, Grafana
- Nice-to-have: GPU scheduling, model serving infra, cost controls, multi-region strategies
3) LLM Systems Engineer
Role
Build production-grade LLM workflows: prompt and tool orchestration, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), output structuring, safety and policy constraints, and evaluation pipelines. You’ll focus on correctness, latency, and repeatability—turning “model capability” into dependable product behavior.
You’ll own quality loops: offline evaluation, red teaming, regression tests, and guardrails. You’ll work with product to define what “good” means for specific workflows and ship systems that hold up under real user pressure.
- Education: BS/MS in CS, ML, Math, or equivalent experience; strong Python skills
- Experience: 4+ years; shipped ML/LLM features; understands serving + evaluation
- Typical technologies: Python, PyTorch, FastAPI, vLLM/Triton (or similar), embeddings, vector search
- Nice-to-have: Dataset curation, eval harnesses, prompt/tooling frameworks, latency profiling
4) Search & Retrieval Engineer
Role
Build the retrieval layer that turns scattered content into usable context: indexing pipelines, chunking strategies, hybrid search (lexical + vector), ranking, caching, and relevance measurement. Your work makes knowledge compounding possible—fast, correct answers with traceable provenance and strong performance.
You’ll design retrieval primitives that are stable and debuggable: explainable scoring, robust metadata, and the ability to iterate on quality without breaking user trust. You’ll partner with LLM systems to improve end-to-end outcomes.
- Education: BS/MS in CS/Math or equivalent; IR fundamentals
- Experience: 4+ years; built search systems or large-scale indexing pipelines
- Typical technologies: Elasticsearch/OpenSearch, Postgres, vector DBs, embeddings, ranking signals
- Nice-to-have: Learning-to-rank, evaluation datasets, query understanding, dedupe + entity resolution
5) Operations & Program Manager
Role
Drive execution across multiple streams: roadmap coordination, release management, cross-functional alignment, and internal operating cadence. You’ll bring clarity to ambiguous work, create repeatable processes, and keep teams moving with high signal and low overhead.
You’ll own the “how we run” layer: planning rhythms, meeting hygiene, documentation standards, and escalation paths. You’re a builder of operational systems—someone who can reduce friction without slowing velocity.
- Education: BA/BS preferred; equivalent experience welcomed
- Experience: 5+ years in program management/ops; shipped complex projects
- Typical technologies: Notion/Confluence, Jira/Linear, Google Workspace, KPI dashboards
- Nice-to-have: Technical literacy (APIs, CI/CD), vendor management, compliance coordination
6) Security Engineer
Role
Make security a product advantage: threat modeling, secure-by-default patterns, dependency hygiene, secrets management, and safe data handling across desktop and cloud surfaces. You’ll build guardrails that don’t kill developer velocity— security that’s engineered, automated, and measurable.
You’ll partner with infrastructure and product engineering to harden deployments, improve detection and response, and establish practical security controls appropriate for an AI platform. You’ll teach by building: templates, automation, and clear standards.
- Education: BS in CS/CE/EE or equivalent; strong security fundamentals
- Experience: 4+ years security engineering; hands-on app + cloud security
- Typical technologies: IAM, KMS, SAST/DAST, dependency scanning, SIEM basics, audit logging
- Nice-to-have: SOC2 readiness, secure SDLC, penetration testing, desktop app threat models
7) Developer Experience Engineer
Role
Accelerate the entire engineering org by improving build speed, CI reliability, test ergonomics, and developer workflows. You’ll reduce friction at the source: better tooling, better defaults, and clearer paths to ship.
You’ll own the “velocity infrastructure”: monorepo hygiene, reproducible builds, dependency strategy, local dev environments, and automation that keeps quality high. You’re the person who makes the team feel 2× faster.
- Education: BS in CS or equivalent; strong software engineering fundamentals
- Experience: 4+ years; tooling, CI/CD, or build system ownership
- Typical technologies: Python, PHP, build tooling, GitHub Actions, test runners, linting, packaging
- Nice-to-have: Electron packaging, code signing, release automation, monorepo tooling