Applied AI Engineer

OpenRouter is the AI routing and infrastructure layer that AI builders, AI-native startups, and enterprises use to access, manage, and optimize their AI usage through a unified API, billing interface, and analytics platform. We route billions of tokens every month and sit at the center of how organizations operationalize LLMs across research, product, and production workloads.

We are a small team that punches above its weight. Every person here has direct impact on the product and our users.

About the role

We're hiring two Applied AI Engineers to build the internal agentic tooling that runs OpenRouter — one focused on support, one focused on go-to-market. The two roles operate the same way; the difference is which domain you go deep on.

We believe we can build software that fits our needs rather than buy software built for the masses. The best technical companies built proprietary tools, and you'll have the chance to do that at OpenRouter.

This is not a zero-to-one role. The first 80% is easy. Getting the last 20% right — reliability, edge cases, the unglamorous finishing work — and earning adoption across a team that has other options is the actual job.

What you'll do

- Build internal agentic workflows end-to-end on OpenRouter, from prototype to production, that automate support and GTM operations

- Integrate our systems with the tools the company runs on, and steadily replace those tools where it makes sense to

- Own the reliability of what you ship: evals, guardrails, and monitoring, so automation is trustworthy rather than flashy

- Drive measurable impact — deflect support volume, accelerate GTM motions, cut manual toil — and prove it with data

- Work directly with support, GTM, and engineering to find the highest-leverage workflows to automate next

- Iterate on real usage: ship, measure, improve

WHAT E'RE LOOKING FOR

- Build-over-buy conviction. You build on internal tools first and champion them over polished external options, even whe...