Founding Engineer - Machine Learning
Visa sponsorship is not available for this role.
Founding ML Engineer at a Series A AI data company, on-site in Mountain View, CA. Build and scale core ML systems, no remote, no visa sponsorship. Salary $220-$300k.
ABOUT THE ROLE
This is a rare opportunity to join a Series A AI data and services company as a Founding ML Engineer, working directly alongside the founding team to build and scale core machine learning systems from the ground up. You will bridge research and engineering — designing, training, and shipping production-grade models for top AI frontier labs — while helping shape the company's technical culture and infrastructure.
The company specializes in high-quality training and post-training data, reinforcement learning environments, and intelligent agents that accelerate AI model performance for both frontier labs and enterprises. This is a high-ownership, high-impact role: your work will directly establish the foundation for how the team delivers measurable ML outcomes.
Visa sponsorship is not available for this role.
WHAT YOU'LL DO
- Build and optimize end-to-end ML pipelines, from data ingestion through to deployment.
- Implement and fine-tune LLMs, embeddings, and generative models for real-world applications.
- Develop efficient training and inference systems leveraging distributed compute.
- Partner with data and product teams to translate ideas into measurable ML impact.
- Contribute to model monitoring, evaluation, and continual learning frameworks.
- Establish best practices in model versioning, reproducibility, and scalability.
WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR
Required
- 3–10 years of experience as an ML Engineer, Applied Scientist, or Research Engineer.
- Proficiency in Python and at least one major ML framework: PyTorch, TensorFlow, or JAX.
- Strong grasp of ML fundamentals — data preprocessing, feature engineering, model training, and optimization.
- Hands-on experience with distributed systems, cloud ML infrastructure (AWS, GCP, or Azure), and MLOps tooling such as Weights & Biases or MLflow.
- Comfort working with large datasets and high-throughput systems.
- Strong bias for action, ability to work autonomously, and genuine eagerness to build something from scratch.
COMPENSATION & BENEFITS
- Salary range: $220,000 – $300,000 USD annually
- Early-stage equity commensurate with a founding team role
- Opportunity to define technical culture and ML infrastructure at the ground level
LOCATION
- On-site in Mountain View, California, United States
- Remote work is not available for this position