AI Character Developer (Contract)

Genies is an AI avatar technology company powering the visual and embodiment layer for AI. Through the Genies SDK, their proprietary avatar framework brings AI to life as fully realized AI personas that look, think, behave, and play like living identities. Genies powers AI companion, NPC, and agent use cases across enterprise, consumer, creator, entertainment, and gaming. Genies has raised $200M from Silver Lake, BOND, and Bob Iger. Genies is built on the belief that every website, app, game, brand, and human will have an AI persona.

We're looking for a creative, detail-obsessed character developer to join our Partnerships team and bring interactive avatar to life for sports and music talent. You'll own the end-to-end character development process—from deep research into a music artist or athlete's personality and public presence, to building out the brain and behavior that makes their AI-powered avatar feel authentic to fans.

This role works closely with our Partnerships team, who focuses on bringing digital identities and tools to IP and talent partners (Sanrio, MLB Players Inc., NBA Players Association and others), in order to multiply our capacity to create compelling interactive experiences.

This is a 3-month contract based in Los Angeles, with potential to extend or convert to a full-time role.

What You'll Be Doing

• Conduct deep research on sports and music talent—interviews, social media presence, fan culture, speech patterns, and public persona—to inform avatar personality and voice

• Use AI tools to train companion models, leveraging researched data to shape personality, tone, and conversational behavior

• Work closely with technical teams on animation systems, RAG (retrieval-augmented generation) pipelines, proprietary behavior technologies, and model tuning

• Test and evaluate conversations for quality, personality alignment, and fan engagement—identifying edge cases and refining model behavior

• Collaborate with the Product team on production schedules and companion development workflows

• Manage multiple character builds simultaneously, balancing competing deadlines without sacrificing quality

• Flag technical and creative issues, proposing enhancements that improve both the talent experience and end-user engagement

• Document character guidelines, prompt strategies, research findings, and production notes to maintain consistency at scale

• Stay current on AI tooling and techniques to continually improve development workflows

What You Should Have

• Strong research instincts and the ability to synthesize public information into clear personality profiles

• A critical eye for detail and quality—you notice when something feels "off"

• Deep familiarity with sports and/or music culture, fan communities, and digital engagement

• Excellent written communication skills; able to articulate nuanced feedback clearly

• Fast learner who can quickly pick up new tools, processes, and domain knowledge; comfortable ramping in a fast-moving environment where things change quickly

• Proven ability to juggle multiple projects and shifting priorities while staying organized and hitting deadlines

• Self-starter mentality; you take ownership and drive work forward independently

• Interest in AI, entertainment, and the future of fan interaction

• Bonus: experience with prompt engineering, conversational AI, or character writing

How Genies will support you

• Competitive salary and equity packages

• Comprehensive health, dental, and vision insurance

• Unlimited PTO

• Parental leave

• Hybrid work structure (minimum 4 days in office weekly)

• Monthly wellness reimbursement

Genies is a well-funded, fast-growing start-up that values innovation, creativity, and ownership. Our roles and their responsibilities are created with a breadth of scope that introduces each employee to exciting new challenges and opportunities that a growing start-up encounters. The actual base pay is dependent upon a number of factors, including: professional background, training, transferable skills, work experience, education, location, business and product needs, and market demand. The base pay range is subject to change and may be modified in the future.