AI software engineer - Toronto

About Palona

At Palona, we are building operation systems for restaurants; our mission is every restauranter can operate their restaurants at first-class efficiency. Palona builds real-world AI systems that operate continuously in production. Our work focuses on AI agents that perceive, reason, remember, and act in physical environments.

Restaurants are extremely complex physical environments that the AI needs to interact with. We are interested in research that survives contact with reality, that can help us understand, and act.

Join us in Toronto

Toronto has one of the most vibrant food scenes in North America. It houses close to 10,000 restaurants in the city of Toronto. We are close to our customers. Toronto has continuously demonstrated its unparalleled competitiveness in attracting AI talents that both focus on fundamental AI research and AI applications. Palona is very excited to continue expanding our engineering and research presence in Toronto. We’d love to have you join our Toronto office.

Who is a good fit for Palona?

• You think you are the next-generation AI software engineer. You constantly try out the latest AI tools and technologies
• You believe you are at least 10x productive than your peers
• You are deeply obsessed with delivering the best product to your customers
• You want to build a really cool product
• You care about your teammates

Who may not be a good fit for us?

• You have not experienced an “Ah-ha” moment with AI
• You had not worried about spending too much money on AI model tokens
• You don’t believe in good software design
• You are not obsessed with making your customers happy

Description

We are seeking an AI Software Engineer with a proven track record of building complete end-to-end AI products from scratch in startup environments. You'll design, develop, and deploy autonomous AI systems from conception to production. We're looking for fast learners who embrace challenges and have experience shipping AI products independently in high-growth, resource-constrained environments. This position requires in-person commitment in Downtown Toronto.

Responsibilities

• Build and ship complete end-to-end AI products and intelligent agents from concept to production
• Design autonomous systems and multi-agent architectures that solve complex problems
• Deploy AI agents to production with focus on reliability and performance, leveraging state-of-the-art AI models (LLMs, VLMs)
• Rapidly prototype and iterate on AI solutions in fast-paced startup environments
• Take full ownership of projects and deliver most impactful results to our customers

Requirements:
Requirements

Qualifications

• 3+ years of experience in software development, with 1 or more years of experience in developing AI products
• Comfortable with prototyping and experimenting ideas that lead to successful 0 to 1 projects
• Familiar with technologies power today’s AI native workflow, eval frameworks, context engineering, agent memory management, MCP servers
• Startup experience or ability to thrive in fast-paced, resource-constrained environments
• Demonstrated ability to work independently and take full ownership of complex projects

Preferred

• Experience with agentic frameworks
• Fast learner who adapts quickly to new technologies and changing requirements
• A relevant advanced degree (Masters of PhDs) in Computer Vision, Artificial Intelligence, Natural Language Processing

Benefits:
• Health Care Plan (Medical, Dental & Vision)
• Paid Time Off (Vacation, Sick & Public Holidays)
• Family Leave (Maternity, Paternity)
• Training & Development
• Work From Home
• Free Food & Snacks
• Stock Option Plan