Senior AI/ML Backend Engineer

Lyra Health is hiring a Senior AI/ML Backend Engineer for a remote role open to applicants in United States. It pays $143k-$197k a year and Level rates it ; you can apply on Lyra Health.

Level's read on this job

Level rates this software engineer role Builds AI ●●●●: the job is building AI systems.
The posting lists this role as remote.
Tools and skills the posting cites include OpenAI, Anthropic and LangChain.
Level classifies it as a senior role.
Level lists 475 other open roles at Lyra Health.

AI in this role

openaianthropiclangchainllamaindexbedrock

rag

About Lyra Health Lyra Health is a leading provider of evidence-based mental health care, serving more than 20 million people globally in partnership with employers and more than 100 million through health plan and partner relationships. The company has delivered more than 15 million sessions of mental health care, published more than 35 peer-reviewed studies, and delivered unmatched outcomes in terms of access, clinical effectiveness, and cost efficiency. Extensive peer-reviewed research confirms Lyra’s transformative care model helps people recover twice as fast and results in a 26% annual reduction in overall healthcare claims costs. Lyra is transforming access to life-changing mental health care through Lyra Empower, the only fully integrated, AI-powered platform combining the highest-quality care and technology solutions.

We are looking for an experienced Senior AI/ML Backend Engineer who is eager to build the backend services for our AI/ML product features that make a significant impact within the organization. The ideal candidate will be enthusiastic about taking ownership of their work and spearheading cross-functional projects.

Lyra is for you if you

Thrive on working with brilliant teammates to solve complex, meaningful problems
Are passionate about making a social impact and supporting people at their most challenging moments
Enjoy cross-functional collaboration with therapists, data scientists, engineers and product managers

In this role, you will

Be part of a team working on building our machine learning and generative AI backend services that will support the many ML/AI product features.
Create the necessary backend infrastructure to enable scalable, resilient and highly performant solutions
Deploy and manage various applications in production
And of course, you will be coding every day!

We are looking for someone with:

6+ years of experience delivering production ready products
Ability to write high-quality code in Python
Experience with modern async Python web frameworks (e.g., FastAPI) and handling data streaming (WebSockets, Server-Sent Events)
Experience working with Docker and deploying applications to Kubernetes
Experience with relational and low-latency databases
Experience integrating RAG (retrieval-augmented generation) into AI features
Experience building generative AI chatbots
Experience with LLM observability and monitoring tools (e.g., Langfuse) to track latency, token usage, and output quality.
Familiarity with LLM orchestration frameworks (e.g., LangChain, LlamaIndex) and integrating with foundation model APIs (e.g., OpenAI, Anthropic, AWS Bedrock)
A desire to learn new technologies quickly
A love of building systems from scratch
A thoughtful approach to balancing quality and deadlines in fast-paced settings
Excellent communication skills with a talent for building consensus and alignment
Strong organizational skills and the ability to distill complex problems into clear priorities that move the team and business forward

Nice to haves:

Experience setting up and maintaining vector databases
Experience working with Celery
Experience defining and using Protobuf messages
Experience writing production code in Java/Kotlin
Experience building solutions on cloud infrastructure, particularly AWS
Experience working with highly sensitive data in a healthcare environment

"We are an Equal Opportunity Employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy), national origin, age, disability, genetic information or any other category protected by law. By applying for this position, you acknowledge that your personal information will be processed as per the Lyra Health Workforce Privacy Notice. Through this application, to the extent permitted by law, we will collect personal information from you including, but not limited to, your name, email address, gender identity, employment information, and phone number for the purposes of recruiting and assessing suitability, aptitude, skills, qualifications, and interests for employment with Lyra. We may also collect information about your race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation, which is considered sensitive personal information under the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA) and special category data under the UK and EU GDPR. Providing this information is optional and completely voluntary, and if you provide it you consent to Lyra processing it for the purposes as described at the point of collection, for example for diversity and inclusion initiatives. If you are a California resident and would like to limit how we use this information, please use the Limit the Use of My Sensitive Personal Information form. This information will only be retained for as long as needed to fulfill the purposes for which it was collected, as described above. Please note that Lyra does not “sell” or “share” personal information as defined by the CPRA. Outside of the United States, for example in the EU, Switzerland and the UK, you may have the right to request access to, or a copy of, your personal information, including in a portable format; request that we delete your information from our systems; object to or restrict processing of your information; or correct inaccurate or outdated personal information in our systems. These rights may be subject to legal limitations. To exercise your data privacy rights outside of the United States, please contact globaldpo@lyrahealth.com. For more information about how we use and retain your information, please see our Workforce Privacy Notice."

How we rate this

Senior AI/ML Backend Engineer at Lyra Health rates 85 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Builds AI (AI Level 4 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.

Classification

Builds AI. The job is building AI systems.

●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
●○○○ Little AI0 to 39

Levels come from how often the tools, models and workflows of the role are named in the posting itself. Read the description and count the AI tools, models and workflows it names.

Key facts

Senior AI/ML Backend Engineer is an open job at Lyra Health.
Level rates this role AI Level 4 of 4: Builds AI.
The listed salary is $143k-$197k a year.
The role is based in United States and is marked remote.
The job was posted on July 30, 2026.
Seniority: senior.
Applications are handled by Lyra Health. Apply on Lyra Health

Prepare for this job

Built from this posting and from similar jobs on Level.

Skills and AI tools this role asks for

RAGOpenAIAnthropicLangChainLlamaIndexBedrock

Also common in software engineer jobs at this level

C++AI agents TypeScript Google Cloud Rust PyTorch

Pay

This job starts at: $143k
Typical software engineer job: $167k

This posting starts 14% below the typical software engineer job. See software engineer jobs

Questions you could be asked

How would you design a retrieval step so the model answers from real data instead of guessing?
Walk me through how you've used OpenAI in your day-to-day work.
What are the limits of Anthropic that you've run into, and how did you work around them?
What's a project where you used LangChain hands-on?
Walk me through how you've used LlamaIndex in your day-to-day work.

Adapt your resume

List these exact terms on your resume: RAG, OpenAI, Anthropic, LangChain, and LlamaIndex. An applicant tracking system matches the wording, not the idea.
Attach one line of real, concrete experience to at least one of them. A tool named with nothing behind it rarely survives a human read.
Lead with what you built, trained or shipped. This role is judged on the AI system itself, not the tools around it.

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