Remote AI engineer work from Canada, on US teams
What US teams look for in a AI engineer, how working their hours from Canada plays out and how the Ryz Labs process works.
By the Ryz Labs team · Updated October 2026
Ryz Labs places senior AI engineers on US companies’ teams. You work remotely from Canada, on US business hours, with the same tools, meetings and leads as the rest of the team.
What the work is like
Day to day, you work with one US company’s team: the same tools, the same backlog and the same technical leads. You join planning, review code and present your work in demos. The teams Ryz works with include Fortune 500 engineering teams.
How your day lines up with a US team depends on your province:
- Ontario and Quebec (Eastern Time): the same clock as New York.
- Atlantic Canada: one hour ahead of New York in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and PEI.
- Manitoba (Central Time): the same clock as Chicago; Saskatchewan matches Chicago in winter and Denver in summer.
- Alberta (Mountain Time): two hours behind New York.
- British Columbia (Pacific Time): the same clock as California.
Teams expect senior engineers to raise risks early, scope their own work and keep stakeholders informed without being asked.
What US teams look for in a AI engineer
Ryz builds AI pods that ship production AI for US companies: agents, RAG search, process automation and internal tools. We look for engineers who take models from prototype to a reliable system.
- LLMs: OpenAI and Anthropic APIs, plus open-source models.
- RAG: embeddings, vector stores such as pgvector or Pinecone, and chunking strategies.
- Agents: tool use, orchestration and error handling in multi-step flows.
- Evaluations: test sets, metrics and regression detection.
- Backend engineering: Python or TypeScript in production, APIs and queues.
- Operations: latency, cost, guardrails and observability.
Topics worth reviewing
Before your interviews, have clear answers on topics like these:
- How to evaluate an LLM system before and after a change.
- Design choices in a RAG pipeline: chunking, retrieval and reranking.
- Handling hallucinations, latency and cost in production.
- When a problem needs an agent and when a simple flow is enough.
How the selection process works
- Apply. You apply through the Join the team page with your experience and main stack.
- AI-assisted technical interview. A structured technical conversation about your real experience. People make the decisions, not the AI.
- Interviews with Ryz recruiters. They go deeper into your experience, how you work and how you communicate.
- Introduction to the team. When a team matches your profile, we introduce you. The last step is a final interview with that team.
It is a demanding process. Of the tens of thousands of engineers we interview, only the top 1% join a team.
Who we look for
- Senior experience with AI, with systems in production.
- Clear, confident spoken and written English for daily teamwork.
- Based in Canada and available during US business hours.
- Ownership: taking an ambiguous problem all the way to production.
- Comfort with asynchronous work across time zones.
Join the team
Take the next step
Apply through our Join the team page and tell us about the systems you have shipped.
Join the team →FAQ
Do I need a PhD or research background?
No. We look for engineers who put AI into production: good software, good evaluations and the judgment to pick the simplest approach that works.
What is an AI pod?
A team of Ryz engineers who work with a US company to build AI systems and run them in production, inside that company’s stack.
Which hours will I work?
US business hours, with the overlap each team needs. Where you are in Canada shapes how your day lines up with East or West Coast teams.
Do I need to relocate or get a US visa?
No. You work remotely from Canada. What you need is a solid connection, a quiet place for meetings and availability during US business hours.
Do you work with junior engineers?
Ryz works mainly with senior engineers: people who have shipped systems to production and can work independently on a US team.
Can I apply with experience in more than one stack?
Yes. Many engineers know several technologies well. In the interviews we go deep on what you know best and what you have shipped.
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