Founding ML Research Engineer

About the Role

Join an early-stage industrial AI team building wearable AI copilots for field technicians working in critical infrastructure. You will own key parts of the multimodal AI stack, from production vision-language systems to edge inference and real-time voice-video experiences.

What You'll Do

• Build and ship agentic vision-language pipelines for smart glasses, including tool-using visual reasoning for inspections and operational procedures.

• Develop evaluation frameworks, capture failure cases, and create data and fine-tuning loops that improve model quality over time.

• Adapt inference and connectivity for field conditions through model orchestration, runtime optimization, and graceful fallback.

• Create real-time voice and video interfaces with conversational and proactive alert capabilities.

• Fine-tune open-weight multimodal models for enterprise and on-premise deployment, including supervised fine-tuning, preference optimization, and quantization.

What We're Looking For

• Two to six years of experience shipping production vision-language or multimodal AI systems, using Python and PyTorch.

• End-to-end ownership of production AI products and their outcomes, including model orchestration and multi-step agents with real tool use.

• Hands-on experience with visual reasoning, model fine-tuning, evaluation design, and data flywheels; experience with edge inference or on-premise deployment is valuable.

• Startup, founding-engineer, or similarly high-ownership experience, with a track record of driving greenfield work and product decisions.

• Strong computer science, machine learning, or engineering fundamentals, supported by a relevant bachelor's or master's degree.

• Interest or experience in computer vision, wearables, industrial AI, or other applied multimodal systems.

Compensation & Benefits

Base salary: $180,000 to $230,000 annually. Visa sponsorship is available.

Location

On-site, five days per week in San Francisco, California, United States.