Navan · 1 day ago
Senior AI Operations (AI Ops) Engineer
Palo Alto, CA
Full-time
Onsite
Senior Level
$116K/yr - $258K/yr
5+ years expNavan is focused on creating a Composable AI Microservice Architecture that powers their AI support engine, Ava. The Senior AI Operations Engineer will architect the platform for managing a fleet of specialized AI services, ensuring quality and reliability while optimizing performance and deployment of language models.
TravelFinancePaymentsSoftwareBusiness TravelFinancial Services
Responsibilities
Orchestrate the AI Fleet: Build and own the runtime environment for 100+ specialized AI services. Manage model routing, context versioning, and standardized memory/history stores
High-Density Inference Optimization: Design and implement SageMaker Multi-Model Endpoints (MME) and Inference Components to serve multiple tuned SLMs per GPU, maximizing hardware utilization while minimizing latency
Deterministic Service Excellence: Treat reliability as a layered engineering problem. Build deterministic "shells" around probabilistic LM outputs, prioritizing data-layer validation and strict serialization
Automated Evaluation & Observability: Implement "LLM-as-a-judge" patterns and automated benchmarking to detect semantic drift and hallucinations across the fleet before they impact the user
Standardize the Workflow: Obsess over building reusable patterns and Terraform-based infrastructure that eliminate "snowflake" configurations, allowing us to deploy new specialized AI tasks in minutes
Agency Strategy: Partner with AI Researchers to find the "Goldilocks zone" for agentic autonomy—balancing the flexibility of LLM tool-use with the precision required for production stability
Qualification
Required
5+ years in SRE, Platform Engineering, or MLOps, with at least 2 years focused on deploying LLMs/SLMs in production environments
Deep hands-on expertise with AWS SageMaker, specifically configuring Multi-Model Endpoints (MME), Inference Components, and GPU-backed instances (G5/P4)
Proven experience with Small Language Models (e.g., Mistral, Llama 3, Phi) and parameter-efficient fine-tuning (PEFT) deployment strategies like LoRA/QLoRA
Strong proficiency in Python and Terraform
Experience with Docker, Kubernetes (EKS), or AWS ECS/Fargate
Familiarity with Snowflake and Vector Databases
You understand that AI at scale is a statistical challenge. You are comfortable debugging issues at the data/serialization layer rather than defaulting to prompt tweaks
Experience building robust pipelines (Jenkins, GitHub Actions) for non-deterministic software, including automated 'eval' stages
BS or MS in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or a related technical field
Company
Navan
Navan provides travel, expense, and corporate card management to automate manual processes and drive spend visibility.
1001-5000 employees
H1B Sponsorship
Navan has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships. Please note that this does not
guarantee sponsorship for this specific role. Below presents additional info for your
reference. (Data Powered by US Department of Labor)
Distribution of Different Job Fields Receiving Sponsorship
Represents job field similar to this job
Trends of Total Sponsorships
2025 (45)
2024 (22)
2023 (38)
Funding
Current Stage
Public CompanyTotal Funding
$2.25BKey Investors
Goldman Sachs Bank USACoatueGreenoaks
2025-10-30IPO
2025-04-07Convertible Note
2022-12-08Debt Financing· $400M
Leadership Team
Ariel Cohen
CEO and Co-Founder
Carlos Avelar
Account Executive
Recent News
2026-02-06
legacy.thefly.com
2026-02-05
legacy.thefly.com
2026-02-05
Company data provided by crunchbase