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Prompt Engineer Jobs in California (NOW HIRING)

Everpure

Software Engineer

Santa Clara, CA · On-site

Implement and refine Prompt Engineering strategies, including structured prompts, tool-calling, and agent orchestration to ensure reliable and deterministic AI behavior. * Build secure backend ...

Tata Consultancy Service Limited

AI Engineer

Sunnyvale, CA · On-site

$90K - $140K/yr

... prompt engineering skills to improve and optimize model outputs • Experience with Vision Language Models (VLMs) for computer vision use cases • Knowledge of Git, CI/CD tools, and cloud platforms ...

Ascend

Solutions Engineer

San Francisco, CA

$45/hr

Responsibilities Own and optimize prompt logic * Build, test, and refine prompts that power AI agents using prompt engineering and analytical problem-solving. * Design systems that enable scalable ...

Clerk AI

Staff Software Engineer

San Francisco, CA · On-site

... prompt engineering to context management, tool calling, and response streaming • Drive architectural decisions that shape our voice AI pipeline, including integration with STT, TTS, and LLM ...

Carter Support Services

AI/ML Engineer

Burbank, CA · On-site

Develop and optimize prompt engineering strategies for LLM-based systems * Build and deploy RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) pipelines * Integrate LLMs via APIs (Azure OpenAI preferred) into ...

Tata Consultancy Services

Learn Prompt Engineering: Assist the team in designing, testing, and refining prompts to interact with LLMs (like GPT-4, Claude, etc.) for tasks like code generation and problem-solving. * Utilize ...

Northern Base

AI Engineer

Santa Clara, CA · On-site

Hands-on experience with LangGraph, LangChain, Large Language Models (LLMs), and prompt engineering. * Experience architecting, designing, and deploying enterprise-grade AI applications. * Strong ...

Fluency

AI Engineer

San Francisco, CA · On-site

Responsibilities : • Build new AI features end to end, from prototype to production. • Improve AI output quality through prompt engineering, model selection, retrieval, and evaluation. • Design ...

Apple

AI/ML Engineer, Applied Data Science

Cupertino, CA · On-site

$141K - $169K/yr

Do you enjoy the craft of prompt engineering, retrieval optimization, and grounding? Can you build AI systems that are not just impressive demos, but reliable production tools? The Applied Data ...

OPPO US Research Center

AI Engineer

Palo Alto, CA · On-site

Design and improve prompt engineering and context engineering workflows, including AI evaluation, debugging, and tuning for real-world product scenarios. * Build and improve AI agent systems with ...

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Prompt Engineer information

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How much do prompt engineer jobs pay per hour?

As of Aug 13, 2026, the average hourly pay for prompt engineer in California is $46.47, according to ZipRecruiter salary data. Most workers in this role earn between $35.34 and $60.00 per hour, depending on experience, location, and employer.

What skills and qualifications are needed to be a prompt engineer?

To thrive as a Prompt Engineer, you need a strong grasp of natural language processing (NLP), machine learning concepts, and experience crafting effective prompts for large language models, usually supported by a technical degree or relevant experience. Familiarity with tools such as OpenAI's API, Hugging Face, or other AI platforms, as well as knowledge of programming languages like Python, is highly valuable. Creative thinking, analytical problem-solving, and cross-functional communication skills help differentiate top candidates in this field. These abilities are crucial for optimizing AI outcomes and ensuring collaboration with both technical and non-technical teams.

What does a prompt engineer do?

A typical day for a Prompt Engineer involves designing, testing, and refining prompts to enhance the performance of AI language models, often collaborating closely with data scientists, software engineers, and product managers. You might analyze the results of model outputs, integrate user or stakeholder feedback, and iterate on prompt strategies to solve diverse business challenges. Your role will usually include documentation, troubleshooting, and keeping up with the latest advances in AI technologies. Expect a mix of independent work and regular team meetings in a dynamic, fast-evolving environment focused on innovation and improvement.

Are prompt engineers still in demand?

Prompt engineers are currently in demand as organizations seek professionals skilled in designing effective prompts for AI language models. The role often requires knowledge of natural language processing, machine learning, and familiarity with AI tools like GPT. Demand is expected to grow as AI integration expands across industries.

What is a prompt engineer?

A Prompt Engineer is a professional who designs, refines, and optimizes prompts to improve interactions with AI models, such as ChatGPT. Their role involves understanding model behavior, crafting precise queries, and experimenting with phrasing to achieve desired outputs. They may work in AI research, software development, or content generation to maximize AI efficiency. Strong skills in language, logic, and sometimes coding are essential for success in this role.

What exactly is prompt engineer work?

A prompt engineer designs and optimizes prompts used to interact with AI language models, ensuring accurate and relevant outputs. The role requires understanding of AI systems, natural language processing, and often involves testing and refining prompts to improve model performance.
What are the most commonly searched types of Prompt Engineer jobs in California? The most popular types of Prompt Engineer jobs in California are:
What are popular job titles related to Prompt Engineer jobs in California? For Prompt Engineer jobs in California, the most frequently searched job titles are:
What job categories do people searching Prompt Engineer jobs in California look for? The top searched job categories for Prompt Engineer jobs in California are:
What cities in California are hiring for Prompt Engineer jobs? Cities in California with the most Prompt Engineer job openings:
Prompt Engineer jobs near you
Infographic showing various Prompt Engineer job openings in California as of August 2026, with employment types broken down into 100% Full Time. Highlights an 100% In-person job distribution, with an average salary of $96,657 per year, or $46.5 per hour.

Conversational AI Engineer, System Prompt

Known

San Francisco, CA • On-site

Full-time

Re-posted 7 days ago

Job description

Known - Conversational AI Engineer, System Prompt and Orchestration
  • San Francisco, CA (In-Person)

Known is a matchmaker that talks to users and supports them like a friend. Our mission is to empower humanity by applying general intelligence to human connection.
Users join Known by telling us their life story. On average, our new users talk to our AI voice agent for 27 minutes, giving us a uniquely intimate multi-modal data set.
We are a team of engineers who've created some of the most widely used AI-driven consumer products including Uber Eats, Uber, Faire and Afterpay.
We love to work hard, with a high degree of autonomy and ownership. We work together in Cow Hollow, San Francisco.
About the Role
We're looking for founding Conversational AI Engineers to build the prompt systems powering our voice-led onboarding and user experiences.
This is a unique opportunity to work with a hyper-personalized data-set, combining voice transcripts, images, and structured user data to empower real-time, personalized AI voice-led conversations at scale. You'll work directly with Chen Peng, former head of ML at Uber Eats and Faire.
What You'll Do
  • Prompt Orchestration & Context Optimization: Architecting the core system prompts and managing context windows to ensure highly responsive, contextually relevant, and logically sound AI reasoning without bloating token counts or causing latency spikes.
  • EQ & Semantic Memory: Building prompt systems that allow Known to maintain a consistent, empathetic, and uniquely "Known" personality. You'll design mechanisms to seamlessly weave long-term user memories and preferences into real-time dialogue, while helping the user drive the conversation.
  • Conversational Intelligence: Designing advanced prompt chains (and fallback logic) to gracefully handle conversational tangents, user interruptions, semantic end-of-turn conversation logic,, and complex emotional states so Known feels empathetic and responsive.
  • Agentic Workflow Design: Implementing and maintaining the prompt-driven logic for multi-agent frameworks, where your system instructions act as the routing engine between the user, external APIs, and our internal matchmaking engine.
  • Evals for Conversational Quality: Developing custom evaluation frameworks to measure "conversational success." You'll go beyond basic fact-checking to rigorously assess conversational dynamism, warmth, engagement, and hallucination reduction.

Requirements
We're looking for someone who can make automated systems feel undeniably natural:
  • 2-3 Years in Conversational AI/NLP: Proven experience designing, testing, and deploying complex LLM applications and system prompts in high-traffic production environments.
  • The Prompt Stack: Deep familiarity with state-of-the-art prompt engineering techniques (e.g., Few-Shot, Chain-of-Thought, ReAct).
  • Agentic & RAG Architectures: Experience building the "brain" logic for LLMs using frameworks like LangGraph, LlamaIndex, or Haystack to manage complex, non-linear dialogue and dynamic knowledge retrieval.
  • Production Hardened: You treat prompts as an engineering problem. You've optimized prompt systems for scale, API cost, and speed. You're comfortable with prompt version control, programmatic prompt optimization (e.g., DSPy), and building continuous integration pipelines for AI evals.
Our Investors
We're backed by Eurie Kim and Kirsten Green at Forerunner Ventures (the investors behind Decagon, Faire, and Oura), NFX and PearVC.
Learn more
  • Known
  • Our Launch
  • Known's 10M Seed | TechCrunch
  • "You Don't Need to Swipe Right" - Known | NYT
  • Known | FastCompany
  • Website

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